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Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi
On his blog, Aaron Seigo writes about a name change for the Spark tablet: "Today, however, I get to share with you an adjustment in our naming scheme. We ran into a problem with trademark for the name we had chosen, and this pushed us back to the drawing board. This may have been a blessing in disguise as we looked into some of the broader pictures around this topic. In the end, we decided to go with a musical theme that celebrates some of the brightest lights in human history when it
comes to making, playing and living interesting lives.
For our debut product, the tablet formerly known as Spark, we have re-christened it:
Vivaldi"
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Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 15, 2012 17:58 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] Wonder if the same people as in this cease-and-desist episode are responsible. Next up, a cease-and-desist from Vivendi, because in the world of big business it's not enough to fence off your land: you have to devastate your neighbours' land as well.
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 15, 2012 22:04 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Trademarks must be actively policed to remain valid. The C-D letter flurry is an unfortunate result but its the reality of how this particular type of intellectual property is managed. If there is any chance at all that you are infringing a trademark the holder is going to C-D letter you just to make sure they do not lose protected status for their marks in the future. The have to show due diligence at policing the marks if they ever have to go after someone who is deliberately infringing to hurt their business.
The one benefit of this approach is that there is really no such thing as a submarine trademark. Trademark owners are not allowed to sit on a trademark for a long period of time and then ambush others with a trademark violation in order to squeeze them for cash. I really wish patents had to be enforced like trademarks on most days..days ending in the letter 'y'.
The SparkFun example you bring up is actually an example of trademark policing working as well as anyone could expect. Trademark application filed... objection is filed...discussion happens...agreement reached. Does it suck that lawyers had to be involved. Yes. But that's the cost of doing business when working with any intellectual property issues.
Can you imagine if we had a patent system that was this efficient at making sure patent violations were brought forward on a timely basis as part of patent application filings.
-jef
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 15, 2012 22:43 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] Does it suck that lawyers had to be involved. Yes. But that's the cost of doing business when working with any intellectual property issues. The cost of doing business indeed. Can you imagine if we had a patent system that was this efficient at making sure patent violations were brought forward on a timely basis as part of patent application filings. No.
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 15, 2012 23:24 UTC (Thu) by fluxion (subscriber, #62978) [Link]
"The have to show due diligence at policing the marks if they ever have to go after someone who is deliberately infringing to hurt their business."
I hear this argument a lot, but is the fact that the supposed previous infringers who you didn't "defend" against were 1) not actually using your trademark 2) not actually competing with you, not adequate grounds for defending attempts to invalidate your future attempts at enforcing your trademark?
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 15, 2012 23:45 UTC (Thu) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link]
Definitely not. Have a look under "trademark erosion" in wikipedia.
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 16, 2012 4:44 UTC (Fri) by JoeF (guest, #4486) [Link]
The late Dennis Ritchie had a webpage showing examples of the Unix name all over the world.
Did AT&T/Bell Labs (or The Open Group as current trademark holder) go after these companies? No. Did the Unix trademark erode because of this documented use by others? No.
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 16, 2012 12:13 UTC (Fri) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link] Erosion requires that the trademark is being used in your line of business. dmr's page showed lots of non-computer uses of UNIX, which are irrelevant when considering whether people would get confused by the computer use of UNIX. In contrast, SPARC is a computer business. Spark was also in the computer business. SPARC needs to show, when someone else tries to use something similar to SPARC in the computer trade, that they've done their best to ensure that anyone whose trademark is like SPARC has done a deal with SPARC. Note, though, that SPARC could protect its trademark by agreeing a trademark licence - as is done with the Linux trademark. The fact that I have agreed to licence your trademark, even if my consideration is simply "I promise not to contest your trademark" is enough to act as evidence that you defend your mark.
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 15, 2012 23:34 UTC (Thu) by alvieboy (subscriber, #51617) [Link] trademark policing working as well as anyone could expectAs well as anyone could expect, like this one over here? Gimme a break. You ought to protect your trademark, but you also ought to be reasonable. Alvie
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 16, 2012 1:45 UTC (Fri) by geofft (subscriber, #59789) [Link]
Unfortunately for that approach, there are legal requirements to protect your trademark, and no legal requirements to be reasonable.
(Which, if you think about it, is a good thing -- do you actually want judges deciding if you were being reasonable or not?)
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 16, 2012 9:42 UTC (Fri) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] do you actually want judges deciding if you were being reasonable or not? Yes, since (a) I don't think making all criminal offences be strict-liability and fixed-penalty is a good idea (b) some criminal-trial defences I regard as morally legitimate depend on the court having that discretion.
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 16, 2012 22:53 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] do you actually want judges deciding if you were being reasonable or not?Given that it is their job, yes. Except when there's a jury, and even then. Do you really want lawyers billing you by the hour to make that call?
Trademark policing Posted Mar 17, 2012 23:21 UTC (Sat) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] Holy Hobbit! That pub in Southampton is being sued by Saul Zaentz - the same guy who sued John Fogerty for plagiarizing himself. And just how did SZC get trademark rights to JRR Tolkien's LOTR and Hobbit franchises? Certainly Tolkien's estate would have kept things local (i.e. his native England). Sorry for going off-topic.
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 15, 2012 21:57 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Argh. Whatever happened to Google-friendly names? Vivaldiblet, kTablet, KDETablet, tabletfunathome, or anything which doesn't have already 40M fine links talking about things which are not your tablet, including a famed composer and many living people in the US?
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 15, 2012 22:46 UTC (Thu) by JohnMorris (subscriber, #73531) [Link]
Heh. They just need to make it even more famous. Like the time I was looking for replacement windows for my house. Googling that was interestingly frustrating.
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 15, 2012 22:54 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Interesting alternative: be irrelevant, or be hated by classical music aficionados all over the world.
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 16, 2012 1:49 UTC (Fri) by tshow (subscriber, #6411) [Link]
Next time, try googling "glazier yourtown".
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 15, 2012 23:15 UTC (Thu) by LightDot (guest, #73140) [Link]
Hm. "Spark" has 255M links and "Vivaldi" has 40M, so what? Is there a new Google policy that prevents searching for more than one word?
Perhaps it really needs to be something ghastly like Vivaldiblet because space bars will suddenly get scraped from all mechanical and virtual keyboards in the 3rd quarter of 2012, so "Vivaldi tablet" won't work at all... :)
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 17, 2012 15:49 UTC (Sat) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link]
I think it wouldn't be the KDETablet, but rather the KDESCTablet, or KDEPlasmaTablet. Kablet would also be pretty great.
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 17, 2012 15:50 UTC (Sat) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link]
Wait, I mean KDEPlasmaActiveTablet. I think.
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 15, 2012 23:54 UTC (Thu) by alvieboy (subscriber, #51617) [Link]
Just something I forgot about:
"SPARC" is not an English word, but rather an acronym (Scalable Processor ARChitecture).
But "Spark", being part of common English vocabulary, cannot be trademarked, and it's use cannot be restricted, nor can it be trademarked by itself.
Or am I (again) missing something here ?
Alvie
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 16, 2012 0:29 UTC (Fri) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link] But "Spark", being part of common English vocabulary, cannot be trademarked, and it's use cannot be restricted, nor can it be trademarked by itself.Like "Windows" or "Apple"?
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 16, 2012 1:50 UTC (Fri) by tshow (subscriber, #6411) [Link]
Or "Scrolls".
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 16, 2012 2:04 UTC (Fri) by yarikoptic (subscriber, #36795) [Link]
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_distinctiveness for the description of the requirements to judge on the fit of a common word as a trademark:
Arbitrary marks
An arbitrary trademark is usually a common word which is used in a meaningless context (e.g. "Apple" for computers). Such marks consist of words or images which have some dictionary meaning before being adopted as trademarks, but which are used in connection with products or services unrelated to that dictionary meaning.
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 16, 2012 2:06 UTC (Fri) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link] I'm guessing that the real reason they're not contesting the trademark is that it's just not worth the effort involved to do so, especially since the project is in such an early stage that it hasn't gained much name recognition yet.
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 16, 2012 10:04 UTC (Fri) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
They should have called it the spork tablet, because it's useful when travelling.
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 16, 2012 14:02 UTC (Fri) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
Shouldn't it be called the Towel Tablet, then?
(Apologies to Douglas Adams).
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 16, 2012 15:59 UTC (Fri) by dufkaf (subscriber, #10358) [Link] I can't find any community related links (wiki, forums, lists, blogs, ...) on this http://makeplaylive.com/ page. Pretty strange for such type of project. Also when googling Spark or Vivaldi tablet nothing better comes up. So where are all the people hiding? Where is the main community site?
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 16, 2012 18:26 UTC (Fri) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link] > So where are all the people hiding? Where is the main community site? Try the Plasma Active website, wiki, mailing list, and forum.
Seigo: Spark becomes Vivaldi Posted Mar 16, 2012 19:03 UTC (Fri) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
Related Mer project information:
http://merproject.org
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