From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Apr 8 3: 8:47 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from waltz.rahul.net (waltz.rahul.net [192.160.13.9]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1DF1837B822 for ; Sat, 8 Apr 2000 03:08:45 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dhesi@rahul.net) Received: by waltz.rahul.net (Postfix, from userid 104) id F240C99E6F; Sat, 8 Apr 2000 03:08:43 -0700 (PDT) To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: "FreeBSD" as trademark Newsgroups: a2i.lists.freebsd-questions References: X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Message-Id: <20000408100843.F240C99E6F@waltz.rahul.net> Date: Sat, 8 Apr 2000 03:08:43 -0700 (PDT) From: dhesi@rahul.net (Rahul Dhesi) Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Bob Johnson writes: >I think you completely misunderstand trademark law. Context is of utmost >importance in determining the validity of a trademark. For instance, the >word "Apple" is a trademark of Apple Computer Corporation when >used in the context of computers >(http://www.apple.com/legal/default.html#tm). The same word, "Apple", >used in the context of music, is a trademark of Apple Records, >which markets The Beetles' songs. No, I don't misunderstand trade mark law. You can use Apple as a trade mark for selling computers or music, and you can use Computer as a trade mark for selling apples. You can't, however, successfully reserve the right to exclusively use Apple for selling apples, or Computer for selling computers, or Music for selling music, or BSD for selling BSD. If this were allowed, pretty soon we would be paying royalties just for using English. -- Rahul Dhesi (spam-filtered with RSS and ORBS) See my ORBS faq: http://www.rahul.net/dhesi/orbs.faq.txt To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message