Still licking its wounds after receiving a €2.4 billion fine from the EU’s Court of Justice for illegally ranking its products higher in search results, Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., has sought to reaffirm its dominance by filing a lawsuit against Merriam-Webster for use of their intellectual property, ‘the alphabet’.
Google’s lawsuit reads: “Despite repeated contact to cease and desist, the defendant, Merriam-Webster Incorporated, has continued to use 26 unlicensed products that remain the sole intellectual property of Alphabet Incorporated.”
The filing provides further evidence of supposed wrongdoing including an attached document, ‘Exhibit A’, which was just a picture of the letter ‘A’.
In a statement from Merriam-Webster, the dictionary people responded, “Alphabet’s ill-conceived and fallacious assertion of transgression is both minacious and belligerent!”
Google has sought to cast itself as the victim claiming unrealized loses of, coincidentally, €2.4 billion, and has fought back against Merriam-Webster’s citation of numerous legal precedents to have the case dropped. “They really threw the book at us,” said Google spokesperson, Tim Ternet, “And it really hurt, have seen how thick that thing is? Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can kill a guy! Anyway, what was I saying? Sorry, I’m real tired… Oh, yeah, so we have the right to defend our property, they can’t have a monopoly, that’s our job. Look, it’s their word against ours and who even uses a dictionary anyway? I know if I need a word I just Bing it.”
If the lawsuit goes ahead, experts speculate that Alphabet might settle out of court for custody of ‘s’, ‘z’, ‘b’, ‘r’ and ‘x’, the so-called ‘cool letters’, meaning the dictionary would be forced to rebrand itself as ‘Meiam-Wete’ and popular words such as ‘suet’, ‘rhizobium’ and ‘xerophthalmia’ will no longer feature.
Merriam-Webster has announced plans to counter-sue for Google’s supposed infringement of terms featured in their dictionary, such as “search”, “I’m feeling lucky” and “Did you mean: why do I have eyebrows on my knees? No results could be found containing whydoihave i brows on my news???!! PLZ HELLALAPPPMEEEE!!!”
In other news, Facebook has announced a lawsuit against New York University for 861 uses of their trademarked word ‘Meta’ in their ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’ course. Not to be outdone, insider sources at Apple have reported that early conversations have begun regarding the possibility of suing Granny Smith.
