You may be right, because "antidote" is a commonly used word, but I am with Stefan here and I feel playing save can't be bad :-).
What are the chances that the new name isn't a clash with somebody else somewhere? How far/wide do you search? Do you change again in a while when somebody surfaces? When does it end?
when we bring a real product to market we pay lots of people for branding, user acceptance queries, etc. Even so, when you look at the global naming space, there are many cases of misnamed products. e.g The vauxhall/opel nova translated to 'no go' in spanish for example, which isnt good naming for a car, even though in the 1.1L version it was pretty apt.
I think typically folks w/ name clashes, who don't truly clash in product/concept/marketing typically just learn to ignore it and coexist. The Internet is too big for no clashes. Maybe call it org.apache.ant.idote or something. ;-)
google for antidote and software:
Antidote for PC viruses http://www.vintage-solutions.com/English/Antivirus/Super/
Antidote medical billing http://www.donwalsh.com/antidote/antidote.html
Antidote computer services http://www.antidotecomputer.com/
The PC virus one crops up all the time.
Also a search of the USPTO of use registrations (try under) http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=tess&state=vlg2jr.1.1
shows that only antidote computer services have a live US registration
The EU search engine http://oami.eu.int/search/trademark/la/en_tm_search.cfm shows nothing; I dont know what that means.
If it were just me, I would tell whoever sent the letter to Christophe that our product is a separate product from theirs, and we don't think there will be any more confusion between them than say MS office and Star Office. But I dont want to escalate things too out of hand. Indeed, given you are meant to call Ooo OpenOffice.org to distinguish it from OpenOffice, you can get very close to a trademark and still be clear. But it is too early to escalate.
Perhaps we just make sure that we call it Apache ANTidote on all the web page & docs tonight, send him a letter saying we have made sure that we use the full name. If he insists then raise the stakes by asking for to see the USPTO registration as you cannot find it in the search engine.
finally, if we do to change the products name we ping the virus software vendors and ask if they have received the same emails & what their action will be. heh.
Surely Apache has run into this before, no?
probably. There is some kind of Apache perfume registered, I see.
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