Living with the Rust trademark

Posted Jul 21, 2022 20:55 UTC (Thu) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75)
In reply to: Living with the Rust trademark by Wol
Parent article: Living with the Rust trademark

Which is why the legal spat between Apple and Samsung over rounded corners was so stupid - how are you supposed to confuse the two phones?

IIRC, the dispute between Apple and Samsung was about design patents, not about trademarks.

The requirement in so many Free Software licences to place a prominent notice saying you modified it is, in part, to make it clear you are complying with trademark law.

I would put it slightly differently. It isn't about trademark law per se but about trying to achieve essentially the same goal trademarks serve. It's an attempt to make it easy for the public to distinguish between the original and modified versions even as the author of the original authorizes the modified versions. It functions well with trademark law because they're trying to achieve the same goal, but it doesn't depend on trademark law to succeed.

That's why, if there's a guy called MacDonald selling burgers, the Big D can't muscle in and stop him using his own name.

I'm not 100% sure if they can or can't keep someone named MacDonald from naming his burger restaurant after himself. I know, for example, that the Olympic Games have some kind of ridiculously broad trademark on anything called Olympic anything, which they are very aggressive in enforcing in host cities during the time around the games. This is going to be a big pain for businesses located along Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles around the 2028 Games, since many of those businesses have used the street name as part of their business.

What is completely clear, though, is that trademarks can extend far beyond a name. For example, if that restaurateur named MacDonald was allowed to use his name on his hamburger place, he wouldn't be allowed to call one of his burgers the Big Mac, use the golden arches on his sign, advertise using the tag line "I'm lovin' it", or probably even use the same colors of red and gold for his restaurant's color scheme that the fast food behemoth uses. Similarly, businesses on Olympic Boulevard might be able to continue using their names, but they certainly won't be able to use the five linked rings, images of gold medals, or anything else that suggests an association between them and the Olympic Games. All those things would create confusion in the public, which is what trademark is intended to prevent.