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Red Hat's war on RHEL
Red Hat's war on RHEL
Posted Mar 6, 2008 17:50 UTC (Thu) by ajross (subscriber, #4563)In reply to: Red Hat's war on RHEL by JoeBuck
Parent article: Red Hat's war on RHEL
The reasoning is clear: trademarks are only protected if you use them. Allowing people to refer to your product by names other than the official one scares lawyers because they don't want to have to deal with that kind of argument in a case (however implausible) before a court. So they complain to the folks doing the web page, who agree to put it up somewhere. And then it finds its way into a "tips and tricks" page where it clearly doesn't belong. This is just the way big organizations work. You'd really want there to be some level of sanity checking where the web folks ask "wait, is this *really* a tip?", or the lawyers thing "Is RHEL *really* a problem?". But that doesn't happen, because the web people just do the web site and the lawyers just do the legal stuff. Neither really cares about what the product is called. Hell, they probably don't even use it.
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Red Hat's war on RHEL
Posted Mar 7, 2008 3:22 UTC (Fri) by jwb (subscriber, #15467) [Link]
This is a sort of odd interpretation of trademark. At least in the USA the trademark exists to protect the public, not the trademark holder. The trademark protects the public from such horrors as buying a can of Coca-Cola which is actually filled with Yong Chin Happy Auspicious Beverage.
Who do trademarks protect?
Posted Mar 17, 2008 14:06 UTC (Mon) by kevinbsmith (subscriber, #4778) [Link]
While your example is reasonable, and that may well have been part of the original intent of trademarks, I think you are being too charitable to the big corporations and the "Intellectual Monopoly" movement in general. Generic drugs and store-brand food products are two counter examples. If they are identical inside, why can't they be marketed under the trademarked brand name? Because the trademark owner wants to keep the extra profit that comes with a higher price. I'm not saying that is necessarily a bad thing--just that trademark protection (these days) benefits the holder more than the consumer. Of course with software it's even more clear. In the early Red Hat days, companies selling *exactly* the same bits as RH were not allowed to use the RH brand name. Again, not necessarily a bad law/rule, but to the benefit of the vendor, not the consumer.