dick@cs.vu.nl (Dick Grune) (09/20/87)
Having been flabbergasted more than once by American legislature, I'm still amazed to find that Apollo Computer Inc. has managed to trademark the term Public Domain. From their recent glossy folder I quote: Apollo and Domain are registered trademarks of Apollo Computer Inc. ... Public Domain ... are trademarks of Apollo Computer Inc. Not that it worries me, since it is far from my bedside, but what legal consequences could this have? Can anyone trademark any standing expression and override its semantics? Seems to me that even the American language is in need of legal advice! Dick Grune Vrije Universiteit de Boelelaan 1081 1081 HV Amsterdam the Netherlands dick@cs.vu.nl ...!mcvax!vu44!dick
ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) (09/21/87)
And then there was this database query language called English so that the ad could say: Our <system> understands English*. and the footnote said: * English is a trademark of <company>. Will Shakespeare had the right idea: "First we kill all the lawyers". Pardon any misquote. Ken Disclaimer: probably every word in this posting is a trademark of somebody or other.
ark@alice.UUCP (09/21/87)
In article <874@tjalk.cs.vu.nl>, dick@tjalk.UUCP writes: > Not that it worries me, since it is far from my bedside, but what > legal consequences could this have? Can anyone trademark any standing > expression and override its semantics? Seems to me that even the > American language is in need of legal advice! A trademark lawyer I talked to once told me that one can only register a trademark to refer to a product that actually exists, and then it only refers to a product of that kind. Thus, for example, he told me that there was no problem in my naming a programming language `Snocone' even though `SNO-CONE' is a trademark when it refers to frozen desserts.