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Samba Runs Into Naming Problems In Germany
roadrunner2000 writes: "Some German company claims to have the right on the brandname "samba", so they try to sue everyone in Germany which uses
the open source project "Samba". Get more information from
Heise Online" From the Fish Translation, it seems that the acronym SAMBA stands for something else in German. If you can add more information, post it below.
Exactly right.
s tupid-fucking-banking-piece-of-shit-closed -source-worthless-fucking-product-that-can-only-ma ke-money-by-terrorizing-german-users-of- free-software.
Rename the "German Release" of Samba to:
In-germany-this-is-freeware-SMB-not-samba-that-
Call it "Samba" for short.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
In this context SAMBA seems to mean Sue Anybody that Might Be Alive
The SMB implementation seems to have been around since 1991, but doesn't seem to have been called "Samba" until 1994.
The CMG trademark claim may be legitimate under the current trademark categories in Germany (and probably US categories as well).
As an aside, the UK trademark office is down overnight (CMG's Samba is used in the UK as well), and the German trademark office charges $2/search, with a $75 minimum. The US PTO web services seem really nice in comparison (and it lists lots of "Samba" trademarks, although all of them seem to be "typed drawings" rather than words).
Just a quick note on frivolous lawsuits:
The "McDonald's coffee case" is frequently held up to ridicule as a classic example of a frivolous lawsuit. After all, old lady spills coffee on herself and gets burned, then sues - what's more to know?
The coffee one gets out of a home coffee machine is about 140 degrees F. A really hot cup of coffee out of a commercial device might hit 160. During the trial, a McDonald's QA manager testified that company policy dictated that their coffee be maintained at not less than 180. That's enough to cause a third degree burn in less than five seconds.
Which is what happened. Stella Liebeck was handed a cup of this coffee in a styrofoam container. When she spilled it, the burns were bad enough to necessitate the use of skin grafts. I refer you to the Consumer Attorneys of California pages, where they lay out a pretty good summary of the proceedings.
If you want to make fun of the US judicial system, go ahead, we can take it. But don't make fun of a poor old lady who got handed a little coffee grenade. Some people screw up, but she just got screwed.
This is exactly the reason why trademark dilution exists. Look at any company's corporate web site for details on how you're not supposed to make their trademark sound generic by using it out of context. Let's say I'm a journalist or a lawyer. Instead of "Palm" to refer to my PDA, I should call it a "Palm Connected Organizer." Instead of Kleenex, I should say "Kleenex Facial Tissue." Likewise, Microsoft always refers to its own products as "Microsoft Office 2000," "Microsoft Windows NT," "Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5," and so forth.
Companies can't force individuals to use these terms, but in business and legal correspondence only the official product names can be used.
"Samba" is being used on its own here, not with some company name preceding it. That's the big case here.
For more information, click here.
They not only use Samba as a rhythm pattern on all their way-kewl 80's synths, but they had the audacity to add - Samba 2 to the mix! "Boop boop. beep beep. Bah!(TM)" www.ridiculopathy.com
Do a search on any keyword-compatible search engine for "samba." Apparently, the keyword has been purchased by the Society for Ambulatory Anesthesia. Who would'a thunk it?
For more information, click here.
fyi, Adidas has been using the Samba brandname for at least 15 years. Check this out. I wonder if they'll get involved as well...
--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous
Never trust a company that makes their techies wear suits...
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Also, samba is an English word (refered to a latin american beat/dance).
So, like Sting being Stung, I doubt this infringement will hold up in court.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
There are only so many short but pronouncable words that you can construct. There are billions of people on this planet, many of whome are naming things. Conflicts are inevitable. As a species we need to become mature enough to deal with this, or else we'll destroy our fragile world with rampant lawsuits.
-- $SIGNATURE
In Germany because 'vic' could be construed obscene. Likewise Japanese 'Puckman' became 'Pacman' in the US.
SAMBA, a must have for Unix/Windows interoperability should be able to accomodate - Just call it FreeSMB or something.
SOMBE
SIMBA
SUMBY
etc
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Coffee is boiling water to which flavoring has been added. It follows that when you order a cup of coffee, you're asking for water which was very recently boiling. You are not ordering water that has been carefully chilled to a specifc temperature far below the boiling point. If you want coffee chilled to the (comparatively) frigid temperature of 160 degrees, then you should ask for that.
Face it, if the old woman had ordered boiling water that had been poured over ground coffee beans, and then casually stuck it between her legs, the court would have held her mentally incompetent, a hazard to herself, and locked her up the county mental ward.
When you make an unwarranted assumption about pizza, and burn the roof of your mouth, everybody laughs. Heck, you laugh at yourself. If you sued the restaurant, the judge would laugh. The moral of this story is not that you shouldn't laugh. It's that you shouldn't go through life making assumptions with no thought to the consequences. Especially when the potential consequences are severe. If something is hot, make sure it is not *really* hot. If something pushes hard, make sure it won't squash you like a bug. Ditto for electricity, liquid fuels, acids, etc. Safely testing assumptions is quick and easy, it just takes mental effort. Nobody ever won a Darwin Award just by being stupid. They won in almost all cases by disregard for consequences.
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
... and may a plague of RMS's befall anyone who says it's a bad idea.
(hey, I just realised that my sig is on-topic!)
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
Okay, like the post said, SAMBA is an acronym. It stands for Standard Anmeldung Meldewesen Banken, which essentially says something like "Standard log-on procedures/protocols for banks". It's a standard method for banks to communicate w/ each other....apparently proprietary and German. Anyway, I just thought a few people might be interested in knowing what it was from someone that actually is fluent in english and german instead of a translation from a web site. Have fun...
Oh, wait, that's right...
Q-Bert
So, there is a preexisting product in the German software market called 'SAMBA', and the company that makes it wants to protect it's investment in that name. I think they're right. The SAMBA project should refer to the product be a different name in the German market. Even Anheiser-Busch has to refrain from selling a beer called Budweiser in some markets, because that name was already taken.
There are good reasons for protecting trademarks, and OSS should play by the same rules as everybody else.
Okay, here's the deal:
In Germany, a firm called CMG seems to have registered a trademark for the word 'Samba'. That trademark refers to banking software, which seems to handle all kinds of banking transactions, using forms, etc. If you feel like wading through a longish list of features in German, see their product site.
CMG, makers of that software, have sent out snail mails to all people subscribed on a German Samba mailing list (i.e. the UNIX SMB software), and have demanded that all users immediately stop using, distributing, or advertising said software. Yeah, that's right: if you're using it, you have to stop doing so right now.
CMG is doing a so-called 'Abmahnung', i.e. a non-judicial process in which a private business/person can demand money from someone disrespecting their trademarks/trade laws. The total value of this process - CMG wouldn't say how many people are affected - is said to be about 100 000 German marks (DM), which is about $60,000. Their lawyers are also demanding 1900 DM from each of the parties involved. That's right - you were using Samba, you got the letter, you have to pay their lawyers about $1200 - until August 8. They'll probably sue the involved parties for that sum of money afterwards.
The c't article adds that Volker Lendecke, one of the German Samba developers - in order to avoid such trademark issues - had already registered a Samba pictorial logo trademark in Germany last year.
Such 'Abmahnung' demands are pretty common in Germany, lawyer firms routinely search advertising directories, etc. for anything that may be considered ambiguous in any way, or infringing on anyone's trademarks, and send out ludicruous demands out, often to people who have no way of acting against them. Whilst it's easy to claim that Germans are idiots and no such thing would ever happen in the US (free speech, etc), please remember that frivolous suits are pretty uncommon in Germany: people claiming money for eating peanuts and suing because they were allergic to nuts and there was no 'WARNING: May contain nuts' label on the box, or people suing because they spilled hot McDonalds coffee on themselves, would be laughed out of court in Germany. This is a fairly normal thing - the same would happen in the US if, say, I created a mySQL spin-off and called my new database 'Oracle' or 'Interbase', I'd be in a lot of trouble for trademark infringement. *shrug* It's that simple. Firms have to defend their trademarks, or they lose them if they become diluted.
Alex T-B
St Andrews
This is part of an ongoing problem here in Germany. I am not a lawyer, so here's my layman's summary.
It is possible to register the commercial use of a product name for a certain business category. This is a good thing, of course, since this is meant to help you protect your trademark. Once you have registered your product's name, you can sue anyone who abuses this product name.
E.g., as in this case, there is a company who owns the right to use the product name "Samba" with computer-related services, and thus, they can threaten to sue anyone who abuses "their" product name in the same category.
However, they cannot go after any dance school here in Germany that happens to be named "School of Samba" or something like this. It's a different business category.
Now, the government agency that is registering these names is obviously rather clueless, as are several courts here in Germany.
A few years back, a (very) controversial German lawyer started to sue any computer reseller who mentions the "Triton" motherboard chipset in his ads or price lists, because he was defending a client's rights to the product name "Tricon". Strangely enough, because of the "striking name similarity", this lawyer has won several times.
Right now, this lawyer is helping another client defend his rights to the computer-services related product "Explorer".
Yes, if your product is named "Explorer" and you sell or distribute it in Germany, you'll have to pay a hefty fee to this company. "To distribute" also means linking to it(!) and this lawyer is sending out numerous bills to website owners running a list of Shareware links to products such as "FTP Explorer".
Yes, it is claimed that Microsoft has paid a fee to be "allowed" to use the word "Explorer" in Germany, too.
This is a big major pain in the *ss here in Germany and an obvious abuse of German law. They are going after the little guys by sending their bills to site owners and those who merely mirror a site. Recently, c't, a major German computer magazine, put a few applicates which used "Explorer" in their name on a CD-ROM that came with the magazine. This has promptly started a legal battle which began by threats to sue every single newspaper shop in Germany selling c't.
This lawyer has become a bit of a persona-non-grata in the German net community, but he himself really enjoys this fame and status and brags a lot about his new "Explorer"-related court cases in the German usenet groups de.soc.recht.misc or de.soc.recht.datennetze. In fact, I am sure that he'd love to know that folks talk about him on a foreign forum.
Anyway, all this madness has lead to a disturbing trend of everyone threatening anyone else to sue about a product name. Try to search for "Abmahnung" on Dejanew or in the Heise Newsticker.
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