The Symbol for Pi is Somehow Trademarked, Which Led to Pulled Products on Zazzle

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) regularly comes under fire for letting questionable trademarks and patents slip through the cracks, and this story adds another doozy to the pile.

The symbol for Pi — you know, the number 3.14 etc. etc. — was apparently registered in the United States as trademark 4,473,631. The lucky owner? One Paul Ingrisano, who operates out of New York as “Pi Productions Corp.” To differentiate between the widely used Pi symbol and his own design, Ingrisano tacked a period onto the end. Wouldn’t you know it; the USPTO let it through.

Mr. Ingrisano reportedly operates several brick-and-mortar retail shops in New York, and does sell t-shirts that have the Pi symbol plus the period on them. And I suppose that’s all fine and well. But, according to Wired, Mr. Ingrisano retained legal counsel and then sent a cease-and-desist letter to online print shop Zazzle, ordering the site to remove pretty much any product with the Pi symbol on it — even if that Pi symbol didn’t have Ingrisano’s awfully creative period following it.

Zazzle felt compelled to comply with the cease-and-desist, at least temporarily, resulting in a bunch of Zazzle sellers whose Pi-inspired products were no longer available for purchase on the website. The company reversed course a few days later, likely realizing what a ridiculous claim Ingrisano was making on designs that aren’t anywhere close to being his creation.

The symbol for Pi is actually the Greek letter Pi, which has been around for… well, for a really, really long time. And that letter started being used to represent the number Pi in the middle of the 18th century. Both of these dates are well before this past January, when Ingrisano received the trademark for his “Pi plus a period” design. And aside from the geeky Pi-related t-shirts you might find, the Greek letter has been used on clothing by fraternities and sororities for decades. A symbol this widely used should not come close to being trademarked; yet it happened.

It’s yet another sad example of our country’s broken trademark and patent system. Patent trolls are no stranger to the tech industry — we report on them all the time — but this story goes to show you that they exist in the world of trademarks, as well. Hopefully we get some fixes in place. The sooner, the better.