From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Apr 7 2:22: 5 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from yellow.rahul.net (yellow.rahul.net [192.160.13.18]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8CBD537B65A for ; Fri, 7 Apr 2000 02:22:03 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dhesi@rahul.net) Received: by yellow.rahul.net (Postfix, from userid 104) id A26DA7C88; Fri, 7 Apr 2000 02:22:02 -0700 (PDT) To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: "FreeBSD" as trademark Newsgroups: a2i.lists.freebsd-questions References: X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Message-Id: <20000407092202.A26DA7C88@yellow.rahul.net> Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 02:22:02 -0700 (PDT) From: dhesi@rahul.net (Rahul Dhesi) Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG "FreeBSD" is a composite term made up of two words: "Free" and "BSD". The word "Free" is not trade-mark-able when used with its normal meaning of "free of cost". The word BSD *might* be trade-mark-able if the University of California decided to make it so; but they didn't. I doubt that anybody else could claim trade mark rights over the word "BSD", when used to refer to "BSD". A valid trade mark gives the claimant a monopoly over the trade mark, and I doubt that anybody except the University of California could exercise such a monopoly over 'BSD'. The composite term "FreeBSD" would be a very, very weak trade mark, if it could be one at all. It would probably be no stronger a trade mark than any of these other composite words: FreeMarket FreeLunch FreeSoftware FreeSample Now as to whether a trade mark is *claimed* over 'FreeBSD', that's a different question. I believe there is such a claim. But a claim alone does not make a trade mark legally valid. The closest one could come to a valid claim would be to claim a trade mark over the distinct upper and lowercase in 'FreeBSD'. But it's my understanding that US trade mark law does not allow a trade mark to be claimed solely based on the way upper and lowercase are used. A more distinctive name like 'Walnut Creek FreBSD' would probably make a good trade mark, as would a more abbreviated version like 'WC-FreeBSD'. But prefixing 'Free' to a word is a poor way of generating a legally valid trade mark, especially when the resulting phrase is used with the same meaning as the original word without the 'Free' prefix. -- 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