PAETHRIA β
PAPELIA Media, a wholly owned subsidiary of EE Chemical, had existed for less than a year when someone brought Paethria β into the legal department.
Not physically.
A screenshot.
One of the lawyers stared at it.
Cat ears had become rabbit ears.
The celestial ring had become something closer to a chemical halo.
The cosmic motifs were gone.
In their place were structural formulas, syringes, warning labels, and religious ornamentation.
The name underneath read:
Holy Volatile Body Paethria β
Silence.
Finally, someone said:
“Is that ours?”
“No.”
“Is it supposed to be ours?”
“No.”
“Then why does it look like ours?”
Nobody answered.
Another lawyer opened PAPELIA’s original design.
The two images were placed side by side.
Someone zoomed in.
Then zoomed out.
Then zoomed in again.
“It’s annoying.”
“That’s not a legal analysis.”
“I know.”
Sub, the lawyer serving as president of PAPELIA Media, looked at the two images with everyone else.
PAPELIA belonged to space.
Paethria belonged to chemistry.
PAPELIA had cat ears.
Paethria had rabbit ears.
PAPELIA was an alien.
Paethria was, apparently, a holy volatile body recognized by the Ether Church R-O-R.
Someone rubbed their forehead.
“Copyright?”
“Already looking at it.”
“Trademark?”
“Also looking at it.”
“Unfair competition?”
“Also.”
“Then why are we talking about copyright first?”
“Because we have to talk about something first.”
“You can do them simultaneously.”
“We ARE doing them simultaneously. We’re presenting them sequentially.”
There was a pause.
“Oh.”
Nobody outside legal understood the difference.
That was normal.
PAPELIA Media had one person who was not legal, media, or entertainment staff.
Ob.
Everyone called him Ob.
Nobody explained why.
He had worked at EE Chemical for a long time.
Headquarters had eventually decided that PAPELIA Media needed somebody who actually understood chemistry.
Ob was the person they sent.
Officially, he was seconded as a chemistry specialist.
In practice, lawyers called him whenever a diagram appeared.
One afternoon, a lawyer placed a printout in front of him.
“What exactly is R-O-R?”
Ob looked down.
“A generic ether structure.”
The lawyer waited.
Ob waited too.
“That’s it?”
“What else do you want?”
“Does it mean diethyl ether?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“R is a substituent. If you specifically mean diethyl ether, use C₂H₅–O–C₂H₅.”
The lawyer wrote something down.
“So R-O-R is broader.”
“Yes.”
“Legally?”
“No idea.”
Another lawyer turned a Paethria image toward him.
“What about this?”
Ob looked.
“Rabbit ears.”
“I can see that.”
“Then why are you asking me?”
“The chemical motif.”
Ob leaned closer.
“That one is stylized.”
“Accurate?”
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“This line is decorative.”
“Does that matter?”
“To chemistry?”
“Yes.”
“To copyright?”
“No idea.”
A third lawyer looked over from another desk.
“Is β chemically meaningful?”
“No.”
“What does it mean?”
“Ask whoever named her.”
Sub passed by the doorway.
“How useful is he?”
The first lawyer answered without looking up.
“Extremely, within a very narrow range.”
Ob nodded.
“That sounds right.”
The Ether Church R-O-R received the first letter.
Valerius, the former president of EE Chemical, read it at a table inside Flammable.
Most people who knew him simply called him Val.
Flammable was a cosplay and live bar located not far from EE Chemical headquarters.
It was not owned by the church.
It was owned by an unrelated corporation.
The owner happened to be a believer.
During the day, he rented part of the bar to Val as shared office space.
Val read the letter twice.
Then smiled.
“Good.”
The church lawyer looked at him.
“This is a warning.”
“I know.”
“They’re alleging copyright infringement.”
“I know.”
“You seem happy.”
“It got a response.”
That was the important part.
He had expected intellectual property to be the first point of ignition.
Paethria had been designed to be close enough to PAPELIA to attract attention and different enough to produce arguments.
The legal team on the other side was doing exactly what he had expected.
The church lawyer turned the images around.
“They’ll say the overall expression is derived from PAPELIA.”
“They can say that.”
“We’ll ask them to identify the protected expression.”
“Good.”
“Cat ears became rabbit ears.”
“Yes.”
“Space became chemistry and religion.”
“Yes.”
“The astronomical motifs became structural formulas.”
“Yes.”
“The β remains.”
“Yes.”
The lawyer paused.
“Why does the β remain?”
Val looked puzzled.
“Because it’s beta.”
“That’s all?”
“It means it’s not finished.”
The lawyer looked at him for a while.
Then resumed reading.
No lawsuit was filed.
Letters went back and forth.
PAPELIA Media insisted the resemblance was obvious.
The church side insisted that obviousness was not a substitute for identifying what, specifically, had been copied.
Everyone remained irritated.
Nobody moved.
After several weeks, PAPELIA Media’s legal team held another meeting.
“Copyright isn’t resolving this.”
“Agreed.”
“Next. Trademark.”
Someone at the end of the table looked up.
“Again, these are all happening at the same time.”
“I KNOW.”
The trademark problem quickly became stupid.
PAPELIA Media had identified two visual elements that continued to irritate everyone.
P
and
β.
Ob happened to be in the legal department that afternoon.
He was reviewing a chemical reference for something unrelated.
Nobody had asked for his opinion.
This was fine with him.
“β?”
“Yes.”
“As in beta?”
“Yes.”
“As in a provisional version?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re seriously going to fight over that?”
“They’re doing this on purpose.”
“Probably.”
“Can they?”
“That is what we are currently determining.”
Ob looked up briefly.
Then back down at his screen.
He had assumed the discussion about P and β was shorthand for something more complicated.
Apparently, it was not.
Someone from business leaned into the meeting.
“Can’t you just make them remove the beta?”
“That is not the point.”
“What is the point?”
“The total use of the sign, its commercial context, the relationship between the marks, the way consumers identify—”
“So beta isn’t the point.”
“It is part of the point.”
“But not the point.”
“Please leave.”
Ob was beginning to understand that everyone was serious.
That was impressive in its own way.
The next morning, someone found another character.
Peperoncino β.
Nobody in the room had heard of it before.
That did not help.
“How long has this existed?”
“Apparently, years.”
“Why β?”
“No idea.”
“Same field?”
“Not remotely.”
“Any relationship to PAPELIA?”
“None.”
Ob was working at a nearby desk and heard all of this.
He did not look up.
Of course there was another β character.
A few hours later, there was another problem.
This one came from an official municipal character account.
Purin Parfait β.
Its social-media manager had apparently noticed the discussion and posted:
More β friends! ✨
The legal department stopped moving.
Someone read the post again.
“Municipal?”
“Yes.”
“As in local government?”
“Yes.”
“Official account?”
“Yes.”
“Why is a municipality involved in this?”
“I don’t think they think they’re involved.”
“They just called them β friends.”
“Apparently.”
A reply from the R-O-R side appeared shortly afterward.
β solidarity.
Ob finally looked over.
For several seconds, nobody said anything.
Then the head of legal spoke.
“Trademark?”
Someone waited.
“Yes?”
The head of legal looked at Paethria β.
Then at Peperoncino β.
Then at Purin Parfait β.
Then at the municipal account cheerfully interacting with R-O-R.
“Drop it.”
“Actually drop it?”
“Yes.”
“Not set it aside?”
“No.”
“Not revisit later?”
“No.”
“Giving up?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
Another pause.
“That was fast.”
“It should have been faster.”
“Next?”
“Next.”
The meeting moved on.
Ob returned to his work.
So they really had been serious about P and β.
He thought about that for a moment.
Legal was amazing.
