Fake Elsevier's complaints about academic publishing leads to fake takedown notice

“Currently, any research funded by the NIH is made open access within a year of its publication. Many academic publishers have been pushing to have the policy reversed, and a bill introduced earlier this year would have done exactly that. This triggered a public backlash, including a boycott of medical and scientific publisher Elsevier. The publishers have since backed off, and the bill was withdrawn. That hasn't, however, stopped the boycott—its support of the bill was just one of a long list of issues academics have with Elsevier. And, in the intervening months, one researcher has turned to a bit of guerilla public relations, starting a Fake Elsevier blog and Twitter account. Yesterday, however, the Fake Elsevier parody took a turn for the absurd. Via Twitter, the account received notification that it was violating Elsevier's trademark. Even as other users pointed out that the account was an obvious parody and was unlikely to be confused with the real thing (two relevant legal standards), Fake Elsevier stumbled across the account of the real version's company spokesman, Tom Reller. Reller, for his part, seemed surprised to hear about the kerfuffle. In a series of tweets, he detailed his efforts to work his way through the company hierrarchy, trying to find out who had actually filed the complaint. After coming up blank, his most recent status report indicated ‘we're trying to tell Twitter the official trademark holder wants it withdrawn.’ The whole incident reveals how social media platforms can allow one grumpy academic to set the wheels of a large, for-profit institution moving, simply due to the threat of bad PR. At the same time, it points out the limitations of many of these platforms, which often feel compelled to act without first determining the facts behind a complaint.”