"John Keiser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Capitalization does matter, legally, when a word is both a trademark
> and a common phrase. I can serve java at my coffeehouse without
> violating any copyrights.
You're missing the point entirely. When dealing with possible
trademark infringement, the question to ask is would the average
person be confused. If we were to call Classpath, "java Classpath",
the average person would be confused, and Sun would promptly sue us.
Sun, however, only has rights to the word `java' when used in a
context related to computers. "open source", by any definition, is
certainly not in the public domain.
> The word Java refers to the proper, trademarked name, and java is
> the dictionary word.
No. No. No. Go out and write a program called `java', and watch what
Sun does.
> Open source is simply a phrase, incidentally preexisting the company
> that trademarked it.
Preexisting the company that trademarked it? Eric Raymond coined the
term right before the free software release of Mozilla. Software in
the Public Interest has been around for much longer than that.
> As long as Sun uses it in that capacity, they are on decent legal
> ground.
If Sun's confusing me, they're definitely confusing lay people.
(While I'm not a lawyer, I do have some experience with trademark law,
having registered the `OryxSoft' trademark.)
--
(How about I start a company called MiCR0SoFt and sell me some JaVa WaReZ?)
Paul Fisher * [EMAIL PROTECTED]
