Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2001 18:39:55 +0200 (CEST) From: Salvo Bartolotta <bartequi@neomedia.it> To: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> Cc: Salvo Bartolotta <bartequi@neomedia.it>, "P. U. (Uli) Kruppa" <root@pukruppa.de>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: Use of the UNIX Trademark Message-ID: <1002559195.3bc1d6dbd5332@webmail.neomedia.it> In-Reply-To: <000001c14fd2$64ef10c0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> References: <000001c14fd2$64ef10c0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
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Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> wrote:
<snip>
> ><exercise for the reader>
> >Try and imagine how far the world could have gone if such rules as
> those for
> >trademarks had applied to scientific research. In particular, suppose
> each
> >and every researcher had had to pay $MONEY in order to be allowed to
> utilize
> >eg Galileo's ideas, Newton's laws, Maxwell's equations[*], etc.
> >
>
> This isn't fair. We (meaning the UNIX community, collectively)
> voluntarily
> chose to use the word UNIX, knowing full well that it was trademarked
> by
> AT&T. (Trademarking the term UNIX was one of the first things that
> AT&T's
> lawyers concerned themselves with about the operating system) While
> it's
> a crying shame that TOG is totally uninterested in the success of the
> UNIX
> paradigm against the Windows paradigm and isn't willing to allow the
> term
> UNIX to be spread around, we frankly can't complain about it - our
> brethern
> in the Linux community didn't seem to have a problem coining the term
> "Linux"
> to refer to their OS.
>
> Every industry has this problem. Xerox pulled back the term "Xerox"
> and
> everyone shifted to use of the term "photocopy", Kleenex turned into
> "bathroom tissue" and so forth. We already have a perfectly good
> generic
> UNIX term - "BSD" that we ought to be using anyway.
>
> What trademarking protects is the marketing and advertising efforts.
> After all, how fair would it be for a company to manufacture a tennis
> shoe,
> slap the name "Nike" on it, and then do no marketing and advertising of
> their
> own and be able to suck off all the money that Nike spends marketing
> their
> shoes.
>
> Consider also that this works both ways too. For example, Sun cannot
> use the
> term "Linux" to refer to their Solaris operating system, and thus
> cannot
> benefit
> by the grass-roots advertising and marketing done to promote Linux. How
> would
> you like it if IBM decided to label one of their AIX UNIX releases
> "The FreeBSD revision of AIX" and thus start confusing all the newbies
> that
> are just getting into using FreeBSD?
On the whole, I agree. I am not inviting anyone to infringe trademark law,
and I don't think it should be abolished. :-)
What I perceive as rather annoying is that, these days (21st century), a
product of genius^Wresearch such as UNIX, which was born about 30 years ago,
can be subject to silly regulations^Wguidelines as those of TOG
accountants^Wpeople. Actually, the so called "UNIX" today consists of a few
OSes belonging to two main branches.
However, TOG may be even right from a strictly legal standpoint.
> And as far as Maxwell's equations are concerned, that's patent law,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I strongly disagree. For the following essential theoretical/philosophical
reason:
Science != technology.
Science ~ knowledge (meeting certain requirements); technology ~ [more or less
original] application(s) of Science.
For instance, Mawxell's equations, Quantum Mechanics, etc cannot be patented
whereas any *original* invention/appliance/suchlike derived from them can be
patented.
At least in Europe.
-- Salvo
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