Date: Sat, 14 Feb 1998 23:58:19 -0800 From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> To: A Joseph Koshy <koshy@india.hp.com> Cc: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, jkh@FreeBSD.ORG, cjs@portal.ca Subject: Re: General policy on trademark violations Message-ID: <199802150758.XAA01524@dingo.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 15 Feb 1998 13:15:03 %2B0530." <199802150744.XAA22883@palrel1.hp.com>
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> >>>> "Mike Smith" <mike@smith.net.au> writes > > mike> - Fight it in court. This is only an option if a donor with a few > > Yes, that may not be such a good idea. > > Miracles do happen; e.g:- the McLibel case (http://www.mcspotlight.org/), > but to bet on such a thing wouldn't be wise :). Yes. I can just see the core team beggaring themselves for the next two or three years over the game of Boggle. > mike> - Give in. > > Which is what FreeBSD seems to be doing. Ok, boggle and tetris are > "just games", but thats not the point. Why is it that people think that this is such a black and white case? Anyone would think that this was a Hollywood production. Wake up and smell the catfood; this is *real*life*. The name "Boggle" BELONGS to Hasbro. You can pule all you like, but ultimately they have the law on their side. "Fighting" this might be terribly dramatic, but it's also terribly stupid. > mike> So you can see where we have to go. Terry raised the issue that > mike> renaming, rather than just removing, things would be desirable. > > Yes, renaming is an alternative, as is moving affected parts to a site > elsewhere in the world. US law does not apply everywhere in the world > (yet). Fine. Take the parts, put them somewhere else. I think you'll find that trademark law is prettymuch the same everywhere. > cjs> action to stop it, he risks loosing the trademark. Thus, a trademark > cjs> owner is basically obliged to ask misusers to desist, and even sue > cjs> them if they refuse. > > The necessity for perennial vigilance seems to be an artifact of the US legal > system. This is not true for other legal systems, where a trademark can > be "owned" without so much hassle. So? The ultimate result is the same; the name belongs to someone else, and we can't use it. > FreeBSD folks, you are seeing just the tip of the iceberg. Did you know > that *a huge number* words and phrases in the english language have been > trademarked or servicemarked on way or the other in the US? Large companies > in the US spend tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars in trademark searches. Fortunately, you appear not to quite have grasped the way that contemporary trademark law works. In addition to the name matching, the *category* has to match too. If I own the trademark "grep", for my brand of unique fractal-pattern rubber gloves, I am not in a situation where the grep(1) utility's name conflicts. If I own the service mark "NCR Control" for my cash register repair business, likewise. There aren't too many consumer products whose category space conflicts with FreeBSD. Games are one of the few, and we can happily live without them. > By a first estimate, 50%-75% of the FreeBSD source tree could be (read: will > require to be) litigated against on the basis of "trademark violations." Wrong. Not only wrong, but so completely wrong to almost certainly be intentionally inflammatory. > What are you going to do? Nothing. I didn't flinch during the last planetary alignment either. -- \\ Sometimes you're ahead, \\ Mike Smith \\ sometimes you're behind. \\ mike@smith.net.au \\ The race is long, and in the \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ end it's only with yourself. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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