Date: Sun, 15 Feb 1998 13:15:03 +0530 From: A Joseph Koshy <koshy@india.hp.com> To: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, jkh@FreeBSD.ORG, cjs@portal.ca Subject: Re: General policy on trademark violations Message-ID: <199802150744.XAA22883@palrel1.hp.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 12 Feb 1998 13:54:15 PST." <199802122154.NAA04198@dingo.cdrom.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 :). mike> - Give in. Which is what FreeBSD seems to be doing. Ok, boggle and tetris are "just games", but thats not the point. 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). 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. 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. The process of locating an unencumbered word or phrase takes months and keeps getting more expensive as time goes by. Choosing a new product name or trademark is risk-prone enough that a few companies require VP level approval for the decision. 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." What are you going to do? jkh> It's the "affiliation" with ftp.cdrom.com and the bazillion search jkh> engines out there empowering lawyers like Hasbro's daily in finding It may be wise to disallow WWW indexing/access to the source tree. I suspect that if it isn't visible within two mouse clicks, you're probably safe. Koshy <koshy@india.hp.com> My Personal Opinions. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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