LFCS 2012: Trademarks for free software projects [LWN.net]

LFCS 2012: Trademarks for free software projects

Posted Apr 13, 2012 11:42 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
Parent article: LFCS 2012: Trademarks for free software projects

A UK analogue of the Xerox / Kleenex genericized trademark would have to be 'hoover', which has long meant simply 'vacuum cleaner, of any sort'.

(As an aside, the legal requirement to enforce trademark usage does more to damn the image of lawyers than anything else they do. So, to pick an example completely out of the air, I use the term 'google' in a column to indicate the act of searching the web, a use well-established for over five years now -- I know people who know the verb 'to google' but do *not* realise that you can also say 'to search the web'! -- and get a snotty letter from a lawyer.

Now what is the point of sending this letter at all? The only reason I could possibly have to do as the lawyer says and stop using the word to mean 'to search the web' would be in order to be nice to someone. Now being nice to someone is normal, but it is less normal to be nice to someone who's just sent me a pointless threatening letter complaining about a normal part of English language formation. IMO anyone who does it and is not actually selling something intended to confuse the public is a craven fool. And it's not even the poor lawyer's fault: [s]he's obliged to send this useless and unpleasant missive.)

(Log in to post comments)

LFCS 2012: Trademarks for free software projects

Posted Apr 13, 2012 12:30 UTC (Fri) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]

Out of interest, was the letter from Google's lawyers, or from the publisher of the column, or someone else?

LFCS 2012: Trademarks for free software projects

Posted Apr 13, 2012 14:12 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

That was hypothetical: I'm thankfully not in a position to get stuff published publically enough to have trademark lawyers bash me, though New Scientist has noted being bashed by Google's lawyers to such a degree that they now call it 'a famous web search engine' rather than use its name anywhere in the magazine -- and that was regarding references to using Google itself, so a plain permitted nominative use, and even then the lawyers wouldn't go away. The case I know most about involves Portakabin and Private Eye. (Being Private Eye, their response was side-splittingly hilarious, at least to sad cases like me. A summary is here: <http://adammacqueen.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/portakabin.html>.)

Portakabin

Posted Apr 13, 2012 15:01 UTC (Fri) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]

Thanks for that, sorry for the confusion.

Portakabin

Posted Apr 13, 2012 20:28 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

No, no, my fault for confusingly posing a hypothetical without saying as much. (A liepo, one might call it.)