Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 00:42:46 12/10/00
Go up one level in this thread
On December 09, 2000 at 15:24:54, Christophe Theron wrote:
>On December 08, 2000 at 23:13:59, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On December 07, 2000 at 11:59:33, Uri Blass wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>Junior was before Deep blue Junior so IBM started borrowing from a "famous
>>>name".
>>>
>>>They could know that there is a name Junior for a chess program and they could
>>>use another name if they wanted to do it.
>>>
>>>Uri
>>
>>
>>I disagree with this line of reasoning. And I have explained why before.
>>
>>First, in 1984 a program by the name of "Cray Blitz Junior" was entered
>>in the US Open speed chess championship. Why "junior"? Because we normally
>>ran on a multiple-CPU Cray, but for that event we used a "cheapo cray" that
>>had much slower memory and only one cpu. We wanted to differentiate between
>>the "real" cray blitz and this much slower machine version.
>>
>>Second, in 1978 Ken Thompson showed up in Washington DC with a program that
>>was called both "baby belle" and "belle junior"... it was much slower than
>>the 5K noder per second real belle program, but was built into an electronic
>>chess board he brought along.
>>
>>"junior" has _always_ been something added to a name to indicate "smaller"
>>or "weaker". "George Foreman junior" for his small version of the cooker
>>he sells. That is common.
>>
>>The second point is that the moniker "deep" seems to have zero meaning in the
>>context of a chess engine adjective. We added "cray" to our original program
>>name when Cray started to officially sponsor us with machine time. Schaeffer
>>added "Sun" to his program "phoenix" when sun microsystems started to sponsor
>>him. Several of us added "junior" to the end of our names to indicate "weaker
>>version based on the full-sized version".
>>
>>I believe (personally) that "deep junior" was a form of protest over IBM's
>>"deep blue junior". Which doesn't bother me in the least. I don't care who
>>calls their program what, personally. It would make more sense to be 'unique'
>>but that is only _my_ feeling. In any case, if you want to look, you can find
>>games played in 1984 by "Cray Blitz Junior" which certainly supersedes any Micro
>>program's use of that name. And we were second to do this behind Belle. I
>>wouldn't be surprised to find out there were other "junior" editions of
>>programs. There are plenty of "junior" editions of everything else on the
>>planet.
>
>
>
>The context is very important in these cross-namings.
>
>Imagine that I produce an engine named "Tiger Junior", or "Junior Tiger". I can
>imagine that Amir wouldn't be very happy about my choice...
This is one of the times when I think that what we discuss here may be
influenced by the language we speak, but I'll press ahead anyway.
I am not a lawyer, but I'm going to guess a little about the law based upon what
I think is common sense. This is dangerous to do when you talk about law, so I
may make mistakes, and if so, please forgive me.
I think that you run into different problems depending upon what type of name
you choose.
If you choose to name your program after a Greek god, or a demon, or a place, or
an animal, or give it a human name that isn't often thought of in connection
with a chess program, you are on very solid ground, especially if your program
becomes well known. If your program doesn't become well known, it is probably
not worth becoming enraged if someone grabs it later.
For example, I think there might have been two "Centaur" programs. The second
one is better known that the first. But I wouldn't expect someone to take names
such as "Fritz", "Rebel", "Genius", and "Tiger".
Likewise, I think the name "Crafty" is offbeat enough that Bob would tend to be
safe, even though it is an adjective. It's hard to imagine someone taking that
name and adding it to a noun to create a chess program name that means
something.
And I think that the "Deep" in "Deep Thought" also should *not* be protected,
since the word "deep" has obvious chess program applications. So I think that
"Deep Fritz" should be fine, even though "Deep" is an adjective. I don't think
that "Crafty Fritz" should be fine.
There are some names that are patently unsafe. One of them is "Chess". There
has been a famous program of that name, and of course I mean the Northwestern
program by Slate and Atkins, but I am certain that there have been many others
by that name. It is an obvious name for a chess program.
I think that Bob has been doing chess for long enough that when he chose
"Blitz", it was a pretty safe name. But I would argue that it is not a safe
name now:
1) His original program "Blitz" has not been active for many years, and was not
to my estimation particularly well known then or now. The successor program,
"Cray Blitz", is much better known by the full name.
2) "Blitz" refers to a style of chess, and this style has become popular. This
word seems like a very obvious modifier you'd add to the name of a program that
has been modified to play fast chess, or has been found to be particularly
strong at fast chess.
I would argue that "Gambit" is a similar case. It's an obvious word you can
either make a chess program name out of by itself, or apply it as an adjective
to an existing program, or use it as part of a larger name. By the way, there
was a Dutch program called "Gambiet" that played as early as 1980. I presume
that "Gambiet" is the Dutch word for "Gambit". And then of course there is
"Kasparov's Gambit".
"Junior" is an especially interesting case, because there is a tradition of
making related product names by appending that word to the name of an existing
product. For example, first there was "Hibachi", then there was "Hibachi
Junior".
If I had a full product, and I wanted to make a reduced version of it, it would
be extremely natural to market under the original name with "Jr." appended.
The distinction between "Jr." and "Junior" may be extremely important and may
render this whole "Deep Blue Jr." versus "Junior" thing moot, I don't know.
I would be extremely surprised if it was possible to prevent your competitors
from using this suffix to denote smaller scale versions of their product, by
naming your product "Junior". It's just such an obvious thing to do, and the
thought had never crossed my mind that anyone would confuse "Deep Blue Jr." with
"Junior" until I heard that Amir had brought the issue up.
I would be astonished if anyone at IBM selected that suffix to describe their
small-machine version in order to attempt to make use of confusion between the
names of the two products. The thought probably never crossed anyone's mind,
and depending upon who named the unit "Deep Blue Jr.", it is possible that they
had never heard of "Junior".
I don't think anything prevents you from calling a diminished version of your
program "Tiger Jr." certainly, and maybe you can call it "Junior Tiger". But on
the other hand I think you deserve protection if Frans decides to call the next
Fritz by the name "Fritz Tiger".
With no disrespect to Amir intended, this is his problem for using a name that
is commonly used as a part of product names, as well as being less commonly used
as a proper noun.
It's like naming your company "Incorporated", and getting upset at anyone who
appends "Inc." to their company name after you've done so. Even if you think
that this example is off the wall, Bob does have a point when he mentions that
there were prior examples of the "Jr." suffix when applied to chess programs.
And perhaps my example is not that far off the wall, since there is an "Inc."
magazine.
Microsoft had a similar problem with Microsoft Word, which many people simply
called "Word". They apparently did nothing when another company released "Word
Professional". My guess is that the use of the word "Word" was too generic and
there were too many other products that had used this word ("Word Perfect") in
the names of similar products for them to prevent someone from doing this.
I think that Junior should be a protected name if it is used alone. But I don't
think that Amir can lay claim to a commonly used product suffix.
bruce
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