Jay Vaughan wrote:
it just happens that Graffiti is what people know "finger painting on
your PDA" to be .. its common enough to warrant usage as a word
referring to the activity of finger-painting symbols for recognition
on a devices surface.
No, sorry, this is incorrect, and precisely _why_ I have to point out
that Graffiti is a registered trademark: it is _not_ a generic term
for
"finger painting on your PDA", "Graffiti" refers to a specific writing
system and implementation of that system, and no other.
Among this group of hackers and individuals willing to bleed on the
edge of gadget land, the common-realm use of the term "Graffiti" is,
most definitely, applicable. Nobody here in openmoko listville is,
yet, a casual nor commercial, nor even consumptive, user. The
OpenMOKO device is itself establishing its first stage of activity
strictly in -developer- land. "Graffiti" is as good as saying
"Hypercard Stack" in such company.
I might be wrong about that shortly, or in your specific case, but I
feel the need to point out among the legalese that if we say
"Graffiti" here, it is probably triggering at least 37 or so
different individual subscribers internal "state machine mechanics",
in a variety of programming languages, who have implemented such call-
lists and search trees required to implement 'a graffiti', commonly
and for some various uses, regardless of mark. Tho' quite
definitively, in trade.
Language is not a product.
The reason for mentioning trademark status is specifically to keep it
from _becoming_ a generic term (like "zipper", "kleenex" and, to an
extent, "xerox", have become generic terms), and is something
which, as
I've said, holding a trademark obligates the owner to do. Sean and
team
will be obliged to do precisely the same sort of thing if they become
aware of someone (mis)using the "OpenMoko" trademark in some way that
they didn't intend.
This is basic trademark law, I'm afraid.
Well, hand-scrawl defeats law, I'm afraid.
;
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