Timothy Sipples wrote, re IBM using its own trademark differently in different contexts: 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. That’s linguistic evolution—with which I’m well familiar, thanks to a father who was a linguist of the descriptive school. I’d argue that this is different: it’s risking weakening of trademarks, which is a legal and financial issue, not a linguistic issue. (BTW, “Civic” was clearly derived from CVCC, but was a different entity, with its own trademarks. Your other examples are normal linguistic evolution.
>It's the same basic principle as hyphenated words becoming single, compound >words. Yeah…no. Open to hyphenated to closed for compounds (“web server” to “web-server” to “webserver”, to name one) is normal evolution. Not the same principle at all. >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. Yeah, apparently. I still find it odd that IBM would want to confuse their base by having POWER and Power mean the same thing but both be trademarks. That’s all. >>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. But “IBM i” isn’t there at all. Which is odd. As you note, it doesn’t claim to be comprehensive, but that seems like a big omission! I do note that “AS/400e” is there, as is “iSeries”, but neither of the follow-on iMarks. So maybe it’s just Very Old; the maintainer probably retired, died, or got RIFfed ☹ IBM taxonomy is fun stuff. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
