back to article McAfee-the-man wants McAfee-the-brand, Chipzilla says no

John McAfee wants to put his name on a business again, and that's got Intel hot under the collar, so it's off to court they go. Documents filed (PDF) in the Manhattan federal court over the weekend tell us that in June, Intel wrote to McAfee-the-man's investmentvehicle, MGT Capital Investments, telling it not to try changing …

  1. Ole Juul

    McAfee-the-man

    loves trolling

  2. Mark 85

    Maybe McAfee-the-man needs to change his name? Not sure to what though.

    1. Mark Allen
      Trollface

      Maybe change it to Peter Norton?

      If I was John McAfee I'd just keep going around being John McAfee. At some point Intel will almost beg him to take his name back from them as I don't think his character fits the stuffy Intel image too well.

    2. Naselus

      'Johnny Intel' sounds about right tbh

      1. robidy

        Too easy to confuse with a film, how about changing it to In Tel Macfee.

  3. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    gonna end up badly for McAfee-the-man

    Because SCO tried the exact same IIRC.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      If he has $3B then...

      Intel will probably settle out of court. Why $3B? Well that's what some financial news sites are saying that is the amount the Intel want to get for their security software biz.

      Then he could have his name above the door again.

      Personally, I wouldn't give as much as $0.03 for it but that's just my opinion.

    2. bpfh
      Paris Hilton

      Already tried - and failed - in the fasion industry

      Ines de la Fressange started a fashion design company, in her name and trademarked it. One management buy-out later, Ines de la Fressange-Person gets ousted from the company, started another fashion company in her own name. Ines de la Fresange-company sued her, and after a series of counter sueballs, the court ruled that she had set up her name as a trademark to the company she trademarked it to, and lost her rights to that name when she left the company. The last I remember, she went back and renamed her new company "Ines"...

      So given the crap that Intel has foisted on us in McAffee's name, and given that there is already a TV channel called "Dave", why not just found an IT firm called "John"?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Already tried - and failed - in the fasion industry

        Because you'd never find it with search engines.

      2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Already tried - and failed - in the fasion industry

        Yes, it can get a bit convoluted. McAfee the man would be ok in most jurisdictions so long as uses the name in a different industry and stays well away from any similarity with the logo of AV McAfee the brand. But I'm guessing he wants back into the computer industry with his new McAfee Technologies brand.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh boy...

    I'd normally pooh-pooh those who want to wrap everything even slightly unsettling in trigger warnings - but Jesus F'ing Christ, you might want to change that lead image to something else! (or move it down the page, or even yes, throw a warning on the link).

    I get the humorous reference/allusion, but I can tell you having that pop up in front of you ain't that funny if you've ever been in the same position IRL...

    1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      Re: Oh boy...

      You've been face to face with John McAfee. You have my sympathy.

    2. garognak

      Re: Oh boy...

      You have had a naked John McAfee pointing a gun at you IRL? Damn.

      I certainly understand that this would quite traumatizing but exactly how was El Reg to know that you would read this. I mean what are the odds of that sort of thing.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Oh boy...

        That he's naked and armed? Probably about 50-50...

  5. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    The saga continues...

  6. Andy Taylor

    It's quite hard to tell the difference between

    "McAfee" and "John McAfee Global Technologies"

    but then I wouldn't buy anything from either company.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's quite hard to tell the difference between

      Doesn't matter what the differences are - as a lawyer told me long ago, what matters are the similarities. And it's not difficult to tell when one name is wholly included in another.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why doesn't he call the company "The Real McAffee Company/Corp/Inc/Whatever"

  8. GrumpyKiwi
    FAIL

    The well was poisoned long ago

    The McAfee name was poisoned a long time ago. The products rubbish, the pushing of them onto unsuspecting customers constant and the support (somehow) even worse than the products themselves.

    I'd value the name at US$2.50 and be gladly rid of it, but apparently Intel's management are suckers enough to buy it in the first place - and so probably need a bit more as justification for getting rid of it again.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The well was poisoned long ago

      I was recently required to install McAfee-Endpoint-Security-for-Mac-10.1.0-RTW-standalone-1997 (seemingly, not a date but a codenumber) in order to secure my computer from russian cybersquirrels

      time passes. . .

      after rather a lot of shit I finally found out how to remove it

      Terminal: sudo /usr/local/McAfee/uninstall EPM

      this removed the product after a restart, and all was well. . .

      after a few weeks - Mac was a bit poorly - and Activity Monitor/Console revealed MUCH McAfuckery still going on

      this time I had to run a script that was unexplainably left in teh library

      Terminal: /Library/McAfee/agent/scripts/uninstall.sh

      Aha, now I know that 1997 really was the datecode for the AV product - it's back to the time when the AV solution is worse than the russkies, at least with their APT, my system would work reliably

      Yet still, McAfee still hasn't gone - my Mac xpc calls

      '/usr/local/McAfee/AppProtection'

      '/usr/local/McAfee/Firewall'

      '/usr/local/McAfee/AntiMalware'

      '/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mcafee.virusscan.fmpd.plist'

      '/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mcafee.virusscan.ScanManager.plist'

      '/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mcafee.virusscan.VShieldEPOInterface.plist'

      '/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mcafee.virusscan.eupdate.plist'

      approximately every ten seconds, so perhaps the code has gone - but some throttling hooks remain.

      lots of com.McAfuckup "service only ran for 0 seconds, pushing respawn for 9 seconds"

      I think I will wipe the disk

      . . .and they expect us to pay money for this sort of 1990's AV experience!?

      1. obr

        Re: The well was poisoned long ago

        You removed the management platform and the agent without removing the AV or FW modules.

        Product Guide Page 26: https://kc.mcafee.com/resources/sites/MCAFEE/content/live/PRODUCT_DOCUMENTATION/26000/PD26214/en_US/ensm_1010_pg_0_00_en_us.pdf

        Funny that you'd wipe the disk but not spend <10 secs googling [mcafee endpoint security mac 10.1 product guide] and then searching that document for "uninstall".

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Thanks obr, as an Apple Mac user I obviously never RTFM! ;-)

    . . .I just did the ten seconds google for "remove McAfee" - and many people seem to think it's teh first script, google never mentioned the second removal script, so I guess there are hundreds of eejits like me with a bit screwed system

    I recently tried Eset Cyber Security Pro, nice GUI, bit it couldn't find sh!t on my Mac unless I ran teh (free) Bitdefender Virus Scanner stand-alone first, then Eset noticed all the wonderful Win32 viruses popping up in temporary memory (Many Macs that I see are stuffed with UXB in teh form of Windows malware)

    i think the (free to d/l from AppStore & use) Bitdefender Virus Scanner is the best of the bunch , today

    1. obr

      Glad I could help :)

      Funny thing you mention though is regarding all the Win32 malware on your Mac. I work with a lot of customers who require AV on their *nix (although not necessarily Mac) systems thinking that it will protect them. The vast (like >99%) of the signatures in that AV are for detecting Win malware that could reside on the *nix filesystem (handy if you use that *nix box as some sort of fileserver or whatnot) but the signatures are not generally for protecting those boxen even if it's labelled "super-awesome *nix viruscatcher".

      If you want to protect *nix then you gotta use whitelisting. EOM.

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