Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 10:31:32 12/04/97
Go up one level in this thread
On December 04, 1997 at 13:00:34, Amir Ban wrote: >On December 04, 1997 at 12:26:57, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On December 04, 1997 at 11:47:22, Amir Ban wrote: >> >> >>>>but you have no prayer on fighting "deep blue junior" because they are >>> >>>>(1) a tad better known than your program; >>> >>>Sadly I think you are right here, although I'm doing my best to catch >>>up. Maybe I can even get Sharansky interested in playing against Junior >>>now :( This is the best reason to fight them, by the way. For a large >>>corporation to try to drown out an old and low-financed established >>>entry based on nothing more than money, a giant PR machine and a whim is >>>exactly why the law provides protection. >> >> >>I don't see them doing this. In the US, there are several hundred >>thousand >>"juniors" running around. It is not uncommon for father/son to have >>identical >>names with the son given a "junior" meaning (in this case) younger. >>When the >>father dies, sometimes the son drops "junior", particularly if *he* has >>a son >>and gives him the same name... >> > >Aw come on. How irrelevant. Are fathers going to stop calling their >children junior because there will be a confusion of whether they are >referring to that IBM project ? Everything about trademarks is when >there is a possible confusion in the eyes of the public. Here we are >talking of products so close that they may soon find themselves >competing for the same title. How much closer can you get ? > it's not irrelevant at all. It simply points out that appending "junior" to a name is quite common, and also unstoppable. They don't call their program "junior", they call it "deep blue junior"... and I don't see a thing that can be done about that. No legal mechanism I know of protects a single word, otherwise the language would be in serious trouble... And I don't see anyone that would confuse "Junior" with "Deep Blue Junior" even if they appear in the same tournament. The names are *not* that close. *everyone* knows what "deep blue" means. They can also figure out that "deep blue junior" is a somehow "smaller" version. And not mix it up with your program at all. >Of course this is not a vendetta of IBM against us. They are just >steamrolling their big machine without noticing, like some car drivers >near a pedestrian crossing. They have been duly warned now in a friendly >and polite manner, and if they choose to proceed, then they really don't >care who gets hurt. > >Amir were I them, i'd simply ignore it totally, because it doesn't have any merit. Again, you can (if you want) tradmark your name, but you can't obtain exclusive use of the word "junior" when it is used with anything else. Trademark law doesn't work like that. And it shouldn't, otherwise chaos would backlog the world's courts for centuries as it was all unraveled. One thing is for sure, if that were possible, you would be totally out of luck, because IBM did trademark the term "PC Junior" years before you had a chess program. We still have one of them in our department...
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