richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (04/23/88)
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: I wrote: >> According to my sister in law, the budding attorney, a trademark >> search is beyond the reach of non-lawers to do, and is expensive >> and tedious. Great. > >I suspect the tricky part is deciding whether applying trademark "foo" >to product ABC conflicts with the existing trademark "foo" for product >DEF. There may also be problems with the lack of an international >registry for such things. If ABC and DEF are vastly different products it is not a great problem, no ? I know nothing of the law, (esp traffic laws, apparantly), but when i worked for Cado computer systems in Torrance, Ca, we got a nasty letter from Cado systems of Sweden, purveyors of fine wall unit furniture type stuff. An agreement was reached that they wouldnt sell computers under the Cado name and we wouldnt sell furniture under the Cado name. Gak, this is horrible, I know I have other examples of the same name being a registered tm on different products, but i can't seem to dredge one up out of the atrophied mass of neurons I sometimes call a brain. Anyway, it doesnt matter, it's not really relevent. Somebody asked "why do you want to know, are you starting a type foundry ?" I wish. I have been playing around with fonts for a while and have knocked off a couple from ones in old books. Whether I release them as PD or sell them is irrelevent, I need to know the legal status of all those names. In _Colophon_ which arrived today, the following trademarks are noticed: Futura (tm) Fundicion Tipografica Neufville Gill Sans (tm) Monotype ITC American Typewriter, ITC Avant Garde Gothic, ITC Bengulat, ITC Bookman, ITC Cheltenham, ITC Franklin Gothic, ITC Galliard, ITC Garamond, ITC Korinna, ITC Lubalin Graph, ITC Machine, ITC New Baskerville, ITC Souvenir, ITC Zapf Chancery, ITC Zapf Dingbats all (tm) International Typeface Corp Corona, Excelsior, Glypha, Helvetica, Mellor, Memphis, Optima, Palatino, Trump Mediaeval, and Univers all (tm) Linotype AG and/or it's subsidiaries Lucida (tm) Bigelow & Holmes. (C'mon chuck, hit 'f') Ok, looks like those names are spoken for. Notice that Linotype has "Memphis"; does that mean Apple can/does have a (tm) for Chicago, Geneva, etc. ? Now, on page 7 is listed "The adobe type library", a partial listing. Some names have an R in a circle ater them, such as Platino, Optima, Glypha. Others have a _tm_ after the name such as Corona, Excelsior etc. (Note that these are all listed above in trademark declarations) Others have nothing after them, such as ITC Tiffany An ITC font name that isn't (tm)'s or (circle) R'd ? Huh ? Still others have nothing after the name: Stencil, Hobo, News Gothic, Cooper Black, and more. Does anybody know ??????? >Although it won't solve that kind of problem, if you just want a straight >lookup in a list, I believe Dialog has a trademark database. Ok, that sounds like a good lead. Does anybody know if they have font names in their trademark database. At, what, $200/hr i dont want to go hacking around for a few hours at 1200 baud to find they dont have fontnames. >-- >"Noalias must go. This is | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology >non-negotiable." --DMR | {ihnp4,decvax,uunet!mnetor}!utzoo!henry ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ That was my favorite part, too. -- Nominee for official California State Vegetable richard@gryphon.CTS.COM rutgers!marque!gryphon!richard