Hi,
After cautious reading of that issue i just checked briefly one
single element:
Trademark registration is done trough a "class" system, defined by
the
Nice classification.
Usually, a trademark is registred trough one or more classes numbered
from 1 to 45
The trademark form allow you to define what good or service will be
covered by the filing, according to the class.
When a trademark form is filled, you just choose the class and not
the subdivision that you intend to protect, and you'll be protected
against counterfeiting acts for this whole class.
It appears that even if jsecurity and j-security have a really
different activity, one being on hardware, the other one on software,
they both are dependant of class 42 (different subdivision):
http://www.wipo.int/classifications/nivilo/nice/index.htm
So, i would recommand a quick trademark filing, especially on class
42
if you want to preserve the name, especially if:
-the name is popular and already widely used by apache users
-j-security (apachie) project is older in a public way than
jsecurity (hardware)
-there is already a wide policy of domain name reservation in favor
of
apache on jsecurity (like .com, .net, .org etc.) because domain names
could be regarded as anteriorizing a trademark...
If that name could be used for any identifical/commercial purpose now
or later, and it's decided not to protect it, changing name would be
the best option, at least on a trademark law point of view.
A court argument could always be that they got different activities,
and that there is (almost) no risk for the public to be deceived. I
would like to point that, in front of a judge wich doesn't understand
much on computers (and that shit happens often), that kind of
argumentation will be quickly dismissed regarding to classes and
trademark law...
Concerning google, the trademark is not really an issue anymore,
because they re so well known that they could argue mainly on
parasitism, and keep the trademark issues around theyr main services,
where even if the google could be regarded as a public domain term,
it
wont deprive them from their right to protect against copyright
infrigment.
In the same time, i would say that public usage do not allow to do
anything, just think about Parmesan cheese, and some other French
wine, and italian ham...
Cheers
Marc
On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 8:05 AM, Niclas Hedhman
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 2:34 PM, Ralph Goers <[email protected]
> wrote:
As for Google, I think they actually have a fairly serious
problem. "google"
and "googling" have become synonymous with searching for
information (see
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/google or
http://www.reference.com/search?q=Googler). From what I've read
this is
exactly how a company can lose control of their trademark. I'd
venture that
if you created a product named "Super Googler" that they would
sue you, but
given that the term is now in the public domain I'm wondering if
they'd
actually win. OTOH, you'd be pretty stupid to name your product
that unless
you want to be sued.
You are right that if you don't protect your marks, you loose them.
Whether that has happened for Google already or not, is a discussion
for the courts...
If there is no JSecurity registered as TM or equivalent, then Alan's
analogy is way off the mark of realism. And speaking of Google, in
today's day and age, people who don't regularly google their marks
and
see 'intruders' show up all over the first page, can be argued, are
not really interested in preventing others from using the mark.
My vote after all this debate is in favor keeping the name, and only
act when/if there is a problem.
Cheers
Niclas
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