Date: Thu, 12 Feb 1998 15:03:22 -0800 From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>, A Joseph Koshy <koshy@india.hp.com>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: General policy on trademark violations Message-ID: <199802122303.PAA04588@dingo.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 13 Feb 1998 09:20:35 %2B1030." <19980213092035.32504@freebie.lemis.com>
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> >>> - Fight it in court. This is only an option if a donor with a few > >>> million spare to spend on a hopeless case turns up. Trademark > >>> litigation is rarely started against small parties without some > >>> expectation of success. > >> > >> The expectation of success might be that somebody in the small party > >> assesses the chances of their success (based on their financial > >> ability) as small, and comes to the conclusion: > > > > Are you actually familiar with the basic principles behind trademark > > law? > > Yes. They default to the basic principles behind civil litigation, > one of which is "I have a good chance of success if I can convince you > that you can't win". This doesn't, however, mean that they *don't* have a strong case. Let's look at this another way: Are you willing to fund the FreeBSD Project's defence against a trademark litigation case pursued by Hasbro? If the answer is "no", then regardless of how you may _feel_ about the rightness or wrongness of the case, resistance is not a viable alternative. > > Did you read all the way through this thread last time 'round? There > > was a particularly interesting post which gave the trademark > > classification groupings of interest here, along with input from a > > number of people that have clearly been involved in this sort of thing > > before. > > No, I missed that. It makes for interesting reading. We appear to be in the same namespace as inflatable cushions and stuffed toys. > > A trademark litigation profiteer is not going to propose or commence > > action without expectations of success. That would be bad business. > > I didn't say they would. I just pointed out one reason they might > expect success. It has nothing to do with being in the right. None of this does. Which is why all this loud moralistic breast-beating is so pointless. Resistance *is* futile. Let the Vogons have their silly name and game; we've got better things to do with our time. -- \\ 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 hackers" in the body of the message
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