[amosson]

Should 50 people be allowed to create magazines titled "Entrepreneur", regardless of whether the word is commonly used. If you are the first to think of something, shouldn't you have some limited right to protect whatever investment you are making in developing the idea. It is certainly fair to ask if someone else's magazine title is sufficiently similar as to be confusing, but that isn't a question for a judge and/or jury to adjudicate.

As technologists, we may instinctively view most attempts to use the law to protect intellectual property as abusive, but at least there is a transparent, although expensive, way to solve conflicts.

Think for a moment about how brands, like Entrepreneur Magazine, are built on the internet. The authors work very hard to develop interesting content and then try to get Google to rank the content. Unless you get very large, or spend a lot of money in traditional brand advertising, it is unlikely that anyone will find your content without Google's help. If someone comes along and steals your content, and puts it on a more "trusted" site it may well be seen by more people than the original (there have been plenty of Hacker News articles pointing this out). In this case, the only redress is to try to get Google to listen - certainly an uphill battle. Again, as technologists, we may feel that Google system is fairer because its an algorithm, but when a spammer abuses the system there is rarely any redress.