IMAX demands are ridiculous, but Ars's claim that IMAX is merely used as an example of "something awesome" is dubious when high quality VR happens to provide a substitute for going to an IMAX theater.

This is why IMAX is annoyed: they understand that VR is a huge threat to their business. The reason watching a movie on a very large screen is better than watching it up-close on a small screen is that in the case of the large screen, your eyes can relax by focusing at infinity. With VR, you can effectively simulate an infinitely large screen infinitely far away.

I can only imagine the precious 5 seconds of thought given to the decision to respond to Ars by the IMAX Chief Admin Officer:

"Hmm, we know we have nothing to stand on here, but if we politely ask Ars to remove references to IMAX and they do, matter ends there. If Ars doesn't comply, we just lost 5 minutes of drafting this pointless letter. Nothing really to lose."

Hits send.

The irony? IMAX is now paying the real cost of that poor decision. Bad publicity and worse - the revelation that they are insecure about and feel threatened by emergent technologies. Talk about pissing on your own product.

I went to an IMAX™®℠℗(U.S. Patent 3,494,524) theatre once.

Having to recline and look up at the screen was annoying, and the size was gratuitous with most of it wasted to peripheral vision. That's definitely not something I'd want in my living room.

FWIW, IMAX has apologized: https://twitter.com/IMAX/status/611953957578018816

IMAX has bigger problems. They're diluting their brand by building "IMAX-lite" theaters with smaller screens.[1] Reviews are negative: "Underwhelming, overpriced: IMAX screens get smaller, prices stay the same"[2] Early IMAX digital projection was only "2K" (1080p, or regular HDTV), and now they have 4K projectors. This is still lower than their old 70mm film system, and not much better than what you can buy at Costco.

[1] http://www.lfexaminer.com/20081016.htm [2] http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/imax-looking-punie...

Paraphrasing from one of the comments there:

IMAX's legal counsel failed to see the big picture.

It's worth noting IMAX does in fact have a trademark in the relevant fields -

": Consumer electronic products, namely, headphones, earphones, cables, camcorders, DVD players and stereos; home theater systems comprised of a projector system, a surround sound system, a screen, media servers and control devices; and gaming equipment, namely, video game machines for use with televisions and computers; video game controllers; computer software for playing video games and for accessing and browsing global computer and communications networks; video game programs downloadable from global computer networks and global communications networks; and user manuals for all of the aforementioned software and devices sold as a unit therewith; devices used to facilitate interactive game play over computer networks; television and video converters; speakers, loudspeakers systems"

http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4808:77u...

I count 30 references to IMAX in the rebuttal, including the image.

Well that shut them up!…

I understand that IMAX's demands look silly but if we accept that "trademark erosion"[1] is a real phenomenon, the question is: What forms of human communication are exempt from that?

In other words, no matter how silly and innocent the passing reference to IMAX is, is it possible that IMAX lawyers must pursue those genericized uses even though those lawyers (and the client IMAX itself) knows it generates negative publicity?

A natural human tendency is to speak with similes & metaphors. "Yosemite Valley is like a jacked up IMAX for nature lovers" or "my budding friend the film student with his overuse of lens flares thinks he's the second coming of J.J. Abrahams".

The tension between trademark enforcements and natural human tendencies to color conversations with innocuous references to pop culture creates silly-looking "cease & desist" letters.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark#Trademark_er...

Well the reality is, many people are bad at their job. But then there's the select slice of those who are also embracing their own hubris in the process and thoroughly expect they won't be called out on it.

Funny, there are some movie theaters using a MAXX brand for a large format screen, but I don't know if there has been legal action against them.

Someone refer them to Charles Carreon, pronto!

I can imagine SteamVR later putting up a marketing site quoting Ars' original article headline like this:

    "SteamVR ... feels like an 'IMAX in your house'" --Ars Technica

They must be worried.

If you don't show that you take affirmative steps to maintain your Mark, you can lose it. IMAX is doing what they have to do.

the film industry standards are just weird.. Why are there a zillion privately owned standards? IMAX, THX, DTS (HD, X etc), Dolby (Cinema, Digital Cinema, Atmos etc)

yet another backwards Canadian company; IMAX shouldn't let their lawyers write up any letters or emails or anything and should stick to what they do best.

IMAX - Isn't that the name of the inflatable robot/healthcare worker/superhero in that one movie? I love that guy. His curved screen is so large, has great high definition and amazing audio quality. I can't wait to watch a movie on him again!

I'm guessing that this was just the sort of typical letter that every company with an established brand sends to media whenever they use their trademark in a more generalized context.

It's as if Ars had said "we googled up their website" while showing a picture of them using Bing, or if they had said "We enjoyed some Coke after the demo" and had a picture of them holding a can of Pepsi.

I'm not saying that this letter isn't ridiculous, but just realize what the job of the internal lawyer is at IMAX: Her job is to defend all mainstream attempts to use their brand name out of context, she doesn't seriously expect arstechnica to comply- It's just that people in the past have lost rights to trademarks they failed to defend, so she is pretty much obligated to write these silly letters.

I find it peculiar that they would call this "censorship", especially when the original article's author, Sam Machkovech, has been one of the article writers who has been beating the drum the loudest in favor of censorship in recent months. I guess it's somehow different when it happens to internet bloggers rather than internet comment authors.

On the one hand, a factual recitation of a third-party direct quote in a bona-fide journalistic piece almost certainly isn't a trademark violation.

On the other hand, much of the tech press is coordinated, spoonfed promotional material for the industry, where such a thing, even in a quoted endorsement, is arguably trading on the mark in a way which, absent a license, is a violation, and there are strong legal incentives for trademark holders to assume the worst of an unauthorized use without concrete evidence to the contrary.

Ars may have been in the right initially, but I think that the current article calling IMAX's response an absurd attemp at censorship is, at best, hyperbolic and wilfully blind to the realities around trademarks.

I dunno. I kind of agree with IMAX here. IMAX doesn't mean "really big movie screen", it means "particular brand of really big movie screen with particular quality controls over image projection".

And I do think that's a potential valid source of confusion with consumers, who could potentially think SteamVR lives up to the same image projection standards.

It's not as clear cut to me as Ars is making it out to be.