> That having been said, my understanding of trademark law is that you have to
> defend your trademark consistently if you want to protect it later. This is
> different from patents and other forms of intellectual property, where you
> can pick and choose when you defend it.
Thanks for picking this up. That's about what I suspected, but it's
still poor style. There's a difference between getting a letter from
the legal department and getting a letter from a community manager or
somebody like that explaining the situation ("I'm sorry, we really
appreciate what you do, but the guys at legal insist that we
enforce... [...] ...send you a box of really good wine as an apology
and recognition of your work for the community").
Again, thanks for looking into this. Please let them know that
Macromedia always had been known for the good relations to its users,
and stuff like that is what I, for example, feared could happen after
the merger.
Mark
On 4/21/06, Sho Kuwamoto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> I'm not a lawyer, but here's my understanding.
>
> We definitely want to court third party developers, and we know that having
> lots of Flash projects out there makes our ecosystem stronger. So please
> don't take this as an affront.
>
> That having been said, my understanding of trademark law is that you have to
> defend your trademark consistently if you want to protect it later. This is
> different from patents and other forms of intellectual property, where you
> can pick and choose when you defend it.
>
> Let's say that two years from now, Microsoft decides to create something
> called the Flash Player. If they can point to lots and lots of cases where we
> have let people use the word "Flash", then we lose the protection of our
> trademark.
>
> Food for thought, anyway. Meanwhile, I'll ask around internally to make sure
> that we've thought this through.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Sho
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Sönke Rohde
> Sent: Friday, April 21, 2006 5:32 AM
> To: 'Open Source Flash Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [osflash] on using the word "Flash" in your projects...
>
> I totally agree Aral!
> What about OSFlesh ;)
>
> What about words containing the word "Flash" like "Newsflash", Flashlight
> manufacturers etc.
> Can't be serious ...
>
> Cheers,
> Sönke
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Aral Balkan
> > Sent: Friday, April 21, 2006 2:10 PM
> > To: Open Source Flash Mailing List
> > Subject: Re: [osflash] on using the word "Flash" in your projects...
> >
> > Hi Geoff,
> >
> > This is just so wrong. You've created an amazingly useful
> > tool that not
> > only provides a fix for the Eolas issue but also provides a superior
> > method of embedding SWFs inside HTML pages. Adobe's thank-you
> > should not
> > be to have their legal department contact you to change its name.
> >
> > If this is Adobe's new policy, I hope that there will be some
> > guidelines
> > posted to make their position public so we can all remove the word
> > "Flash" from our various community sites and open source projects.
> >
> > I guess FlashAnt would become SwfAnt and OSFlash, OSSWF?
> >
> > Is SWF not a trademark too?
> >
> > What a royal waste of time and resources.
> >
> > Aral
> >
> >
> > Geoff Stearns wrote:
> > > Just a sort of word of warning...
> > >
> > > Adobe recently asked me to rename my FlashObject script to
> > something
> > > else because of trademark/legal issues. They are trying to protect
> > > their 'Flash' trademark, and apparently macromedia was a bit more
> > > relaxed about these things than Adobe is.
> > >
> > > So a word of warning to you all who use 'Flash' in the name of your
> > > projects - you might want to think about changing it.
> > >
> > > more details here:
> > >
> > >
> > http://blog.deconcept.com/2006/04/21/flashobject-to-become-swfobject/
> > > <snip>
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > osflash mailing list
> > osflash@osflash.org
> > http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org
> >
>
>
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>
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>
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