Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 11:10:09 -0800 From: underway@comcast.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: C/C++ Message-ID: <w8ekw8t9im.kw8@mail.comcast.net> In-Reply-To: <3FB6B684.F26515FB@mindspring.com> (Terry Lambert's message of "Sat, 15 Nov 2003 15:28:04 -0800") References: <20031114044623.C119838124@mail.blarg.net> <x64qx6vequ.qx6@mail.comcast.net> <xzpu1551oo2.fsf@dwp.des.no> <3FB6B684.F26515FB@mindspring.com>
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Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> writes: > Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote: >> underway@comcast.net (Gary W. Swearingen) writes: >> > You'll find plenty of people that want to break UNIX traditions while >> > you're studying there in the Paul Allen Center, the large new CS >> > building mostly funded by him and the Gates and MSFT. You'll probably >> > even see many of them write "Unix" instead of the traditional "UNIX". >> >> "Unix" is the correct spelling. "UNIX" is a misunderstanding caused >> by the use of small caps in the title of an early paper on Unix. > > Actually, it's "UNIX", if you are referring to the image trademark, > and [Uu][Nn][Ii][Xx] if you are referring to the wordmark (wordmarks > are case insensitive). "Correct" depends upon the authority. Three occur to me: The trademark(s) specifications; the trademark owner; tradition. The trademark spec covers any letter case (as far as I have determined -- more below). Requirements for the type of trademark drawing filed required all uppercase letters in the documents and so (I'm guessing) marks that differ only by case would be considered "colorable imitations" (and so be infringing of trademark rights). (New rules allow the use of any case in the filing documents. It is still less than perfectly clear about whether it covers other cases, but I think it must, to avoid many near-duplicate trademarks.) The trademark owner uses "UNIX" at "http://www.opengroup.org" and asks for that in trademark statements. (A sidenote. Most uses of "UNIX" (in any letter case) are in contexts that do not require the permission of the trademark owner or the following of any trademark laws or owner's rules, in my layman's opinion. Of course lawsuits may be threatened regardless of this.) I'm sure many others here know UNIX tradition better than I, especially informal tradition, but I've seen the word used thousands of times, mostly in semi-formal or formal writing, and remember "UNIX" as being far more popular. (My 1978 copy of K&R's "The C Programming Language" uses "UNIX".) As for the claimed image/word mark difference, I was unfamiliar with the term "wordmark", so I search for it at http://www.uspto.gov and only got three hits; "word mark" got a couple of hundred hits. (Some of these appeared in phrases like "a two-word mark".) It's not in their glossary. I didn't find anything about letter case, except: 1) search forms for "work marks" are case-insensitive, and 2) in the rules for the "drawing" of the mark, there are several kinds; one, a "standard character" (was "typed") drawing, without any claim for font style, size, or color, and one, a "special form" drawing, with such a claim. "Word mark" is used (eg, in application and search forms) for marks with both types of drawings. I didn't bother investigating "image mark", but I've not seen the term and did see that both kinds of work marks have images associated with them in the trademark specifications.
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