Phil Smith wrote:
>....And bizarre. If IBM can't be consistent about this stuff,
>there's no hope for the rest of the world.

There's no hope for the rest of the world. :-)

It's not bizarre. Way before POWER there has been a long tradition of
capitalized, trademarked acronyms evolving to become less capitalized
trademarked brand or product names. One famous example among many is
Honda's CVCC™ (Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion) engine technology.
The 1972 Honda Civic was the first Civic model to include CVCC technology,
although Honda also put a CVCC engine in their 1970 N600 model. I assume
"Honda Civic" is trademarked, at least in certain countries, although I
can't confirm that immediately. It was never "CiViCC," although
hypothetically it could have been. PAC-MAN, the video game, fairly quickly
became Pac-Man. This phenomenon also occurs outside of trademarks, e.g.
SCUBA (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) which is now almost
always written as scuba.

It's the same basic principle as hyphenated words becoming single, compound
words. Language evolves (thank goodness), and sometimes so do trademarks.
Apple, for example, introduced the iPhone 4S but later renamed it to the
iPhone 4s, both trademarked. (The iPhone 3GS was always capital G capital
S, and the iPhone 5s was/is always lowercase s. The iPhone 4S/4s was caught
in Apple's capitalization transition.) In IBM's case POWER and Power
Systems are related but distinctly separate trademarks, intentionally so.
To pick another example, the correct capitalization is IBM z Systems™, not
IBM Z Systems. Vendors decide what they want at every point in time, and
there are no particular rules.

>Hey, where's "IBM i for Power" on that page?

Right at the top of the page: "This list is not a comprehensive list of all
IBM trademarks." But also:

IBM i for Power®

since Power® is explicitly listed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Timothy Sipples
IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA
E-Mail: [email protected]

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