[일기장] Dream with the pretty

Geek has gone from a term used to describe socially-maladjusted loves of Commodore computers to suddenly cool. But be careful how you sling the word around: you may just hear from Best Buy's lawyers. Simon Constable and Spencer Ante discuss. Photo: Dan Janasik.

Just a few decades ago, a geek was a carnival freak who bit the heads off of chickens and rats.

Then geek became a catchall word for socially maladjusted individuals who loved Commodore 64 computers more than fresh air.

Now geek is a term of endearment among acolytes of technology, imbued with golden marketing potential. Just how cool is geek? Any dweeb who dares to use the word in the computer business just might hear from Best Buy's lawyers.

The world's largest electronics chain recently threatened online rival Newegg.com with legal action, arguing that its Geek On advertising slogan sounded too similar to Best Buy's cartoonishly nerdy tech support service, Geek Squad.

Newegg responded by posting the cease-and-desist letter on Facebook this month—and self-described geeks everywhere blasted Best Buy for trying to commandeer a common word that has enjoyed a bigger metamorphosis than the ugly duckling.

"They're using their size to bully people around," Dan Bates, a 28-year-old networking professional and veteran World of Warcraft computer gamer from Florida, says of Best Buy. "It makes them look a bit desperate."

Best Buy says it isn't persecuting geeks, just narrowly defending its Geek Squad trademark against overzealous competitors. "It is not just the word geek, it is the word geek with orange and black coloration" that puts Newegg over the line, says a Best Buy spokeswoman.

Whatever the case, it's clear that Best Buy is no wallflower when it comes to defending its claim to geekdom—the latest in a recent spate involving a number of companies of what critics have dubbed "trademark bullying" cases.

The Richfield, Minn., company has disputed more than a dozen geek-themed trademarks in the past decade, federal records show, including Rent a Geek, Geek Rescue and Speak With A Geek.

Last year, it sent a letter to a Wisconsin priest who had put "God Squad" in a logo reminiscent of the Geek Squad's on the side of his Volkswagen beetle, the same kind of car driven by Best Buy's repairmen.

"I was extremely surprised. We were just doing this as a way to spread the gospel in a humorous way," says the Rev. Luke Strand, who says he has "tried to move on."

Best Buy says the dispute was resolved amicably after the company offered to remove the logo from the priest's car and pay his legal fees.

"Geek has become a term that suggests you are knowledgeable. It means you are very good at something very important in society, and I don't think that geek can be exclusive to anyone," says Dave Ehlke, another geek who faced Best Buy's legal department in 2004 when the retailer sought to stop his Massachusetts repair business from using the name Geek Housecalls.

Mr. Ehlke prevailed, but victory came at a price. "It cost us a lot of money to defend it, a lot for a small company," he adds, declining to elaborate.

Many geeks who scoffed at Best Buy's cease-and-desist letter on Facebook surmised that the company was really miffed about a recent Newegg commercial which might have hit too close to home.

The spot, which aired on cable television and the Web, shows a clueless blue-shirted store salesman stammering and shrugging when a customer asks him to explain the difference between two laptops.

It then touts Newegg as a website where shoppers can read reviews from fellow customers who actually know what they are talking about, and flashes the slogan, "Take it from a Geek."

The commercial never mentions Best Buy by name—though its work force wears very similar blue shirts—but the retailer raised it in its legal letter to Newegg, claiming it depicts Best Buy workers as "slovenly."

Newegg responded with a legal missive of its own asserting that "Best Buy neither owns nor has exclusive rights to the word 'Geek'." Then it added a disclaimer to its commercial: "It is solely intended to parody business establishments that provide poor customer service (but none in particular)."

While the commercial received little airtime, it has now been viewed more than 530,000 times on YouTube, with most coming after Best Buy drew attention to it. Geeks cite it as the latest example of the "Streisand Effect," a phenomenon named for Barbra Streisand, who unwittingly spurred Internet users to download aerial photos of her Malibu mansion after unsuccessfully suing a photographer in 2003 to have the pictures taken down.

Lee Cheng, Newegg's general counsel, is still chuckling over the "slovenly" reference: "That is not a word anyone should use—unless they want a wedgie."

Robert Stephens, who founded Geek Squad in 1994 while studying computer science at the University of Minnesota—calling his repairmen "agents" and dressing them in black-and-white uniforms modeled after workers in NASA's mission control in the 1960s—says the "Streisand Effect is real" for Best Buy. However, Mr. Stephens, who is now Best Buy's chief technology officer, said the company had no choice but to act.

Best Buy, which acquired Geek Squad nearly a decade ago, has relented in letting school chess clubs call themselves geek squads. But companies that don't aggressively defend trademarks, even against seemingly innocuous intrusions, risk having courts decide that they abandoned the trademarks later when more substantive disputes crop up, Mr. Stephens says, echoing an argument well hewn by trademark lawyers.

That was one of the reasons Mr. Stephens says Best Buy objected when "Chuck," an NBC comedy about a computer savant who becomes entangled in espionage, wanted to use Geek Squad as its setting. The character wound up working for a "Nerd Herd" tech-support service at retailer "Burbank Buy More."

Mr. Stephens jokes that he and his ilk are a unique human subspecies: He calls it malodorous technophilus and says it originated in Silicon Valley.

But he turns serious on the subject of the geek-to-chic evolution, saying it was a fait accompli the moment Forbes declared Bill Gates the world's richest man in 1993.

"Geeks are like modern-day monks, but instead of poring over manuscripts we were reading computer manuals," he says. "Now we're the normal ones."

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