Author: Amir Ban
Date: 03:11:51 12/11/00
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On December 11, 2000 at 00:51:37, Bruce Moreland wrote: >On December 10, 2000 at 18:39:50, Amir Ban wrote: > >> >>Sorry, common sense loses again. Quoting from one web site at random: >> >>© Robert Griffin - Real Solutions Software 2000. >>Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. >>Microsoft Corporation in no way endorses or is affiliated with Real Solutions >>Software. Any and all other trademarks are the sole property of their respective >>owners. >> >>Here are two stories of how Microsoft fights aggressively for its trademark in >>France (against something that is even not called Windows), and how in South >>Korea it finds itself on the receiving end of this battle, making Steve Ballmer >>angry, or so it says. > >Steve Ballmer is the world's loudest human. > >>So much for generic names. >> >>http://www.chaillot.com/En/news/n15.html >> >>http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/9361.html > >Didn't they lose *all* of these? > So it seems. These things always end up settled somehow, but Microsoft was on opposite sides in the two cases, in one trying to exclude somebody based on "Windows", in the other not being allowed to use "Windows". In both cases it appears that "generic name" is a layman's term that the law doesn't recognize, or maybe it thinks, correctly, that "Window" is not generic to software. The MacDonald story shows that you can trademark a very generic prefix or suffix. "Mac" is a prefix for "Son" in Scot Gaelic. It also shows that historic or non-commercial use of a name has no significance in law (many trade names are selected for being familiar from other contexts). Do you still think "Junior" or "Jr." cannot belong to anybody ? BTW, generic is relative to the field. The name "Chess" is generic to chess products, but would not be generic, e.g. for a car. "Junior" is not generic to chess products any more than "Mac" is for food products. Amir >bruce > >>Amir
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