SGI Versus "Open*" and All Things "GL"?

One of the things I try to focus on with Ask Slashdot questions are issues involving trademarks and the big guy trying to rob the little guy out of a name, or a domain that they may have had for years. Although this was necessary to stop the domain squatters out to make a quick buck, it seems to have turned into a corporate right to harass everyone. Long before the internet was a household name, people registered domains or created project names that they didn't think would cause problems and now, years later, they are finding out how wrong they were, and how the laws can rob their project's identity. What follows is a question regarding SGI their quest to go after anyone with any name starting with "Open" or containing "GL". How long is it, before corporations begin to carve up the English dictionary and we won't be able to use a single word without following it with "(tm)"?

DooMWiz asks: "I am the author of the Open Image Library (OpenIL), an image library under the LGPL license at openil.org. Several weeks ago, I was shocked by the appearance of an e-mail from a Silicon Graphics, Inc representative. Apparently, they are "concerned" that 'OpenIL' may infringe on their 'OpenGL' trademark. I am not a trademark lawyer, nor do I have any real knowledge of trademarks. Even if I had some kind of justifiable way of proving that 'OpenIL' could not possibly be confused with 'OpenGL', I probably would not pursue it, since a college student with very limited resources against giant SGI would be messy for me. I'm really not *too* upset about being asked to change the name, but during the course of this, I sent several e-mails to the SGI rep, and his replies indicated some disturbing news. He claims that he has already talked to OpenCL about changing their name and that he plans to pursue the ever-popular OpenAL, which isn't just a one man operation like OpenIL. OpenAL may have the resources to fight something like this, since it has nothing to do with SGI's business model but is backed by large companies. Lastly, SGI has a trademark on 'GL', and the rep also claims to plan to pursue projects with 'GL' in their names. Projects like GLScene and DemoGL come to mind and may be in trouble. Anyone with trademark experience have any advice on what course of action to take? Dropping the 'OpenIL' name seems like the easiest way out."

Comments

Re:McDonald's the worst example of this.

[emag]

My direct answer to this ask Slashdot, bearing in mind that IANAL, is yes, you are legitimately in violation of the SGI trademark, it is quite conceivable that people could confuse OpenGL and Open[ICA]L, esp. as all are graphics libraries, and you should not fight this, because you will quite legitimately lose.

They are?

• OpenIL image manipulation library
  
• OpenCL "OpenCL aims to be a portable, easy to use, and efficient C++ cryto library."
  
• OpenAL "Announcing a new open source platform for all-purpose high-fidelity sound."
  

It sure seems like only OpenIL out of those could be easily confused with OpenGL...

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What about SGI's ImageVision Library (IL)

[NeilO]

I think everyone is missing the point. SGI also has long offered something called the ImageVision library, described as follows:

"ImageVision Library (IL) is a toolkit for creating, processing and displaying images on all SGI visual workstations. The library provides image processing application developers with a complete, robust framework for manipulating and managing images."

I'll bet it's this connection that is the source of concern at SGI.

Re: domain squatter vs. domain broker?!

[Rupert]

Did anyone complain about people purchasing land cheaply?

Native Americans?

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what's wrong with a quick buck?

[tps12]

Although this was necessary to stop the domain squatters out to make a quick buck

That's the problem right there. When you start being concerned that people are making money too easily, or unfairly (though it's hard to find a victim in cybersquatting "crimes", IMO), anything you do in the way of prevention is going to have the effect of limiting freedom, which will have an adverse affect on everyone given enough time.

NewsFlash

[thrillbert]

SGI vs. California

In a recent SlashDot story, users of the popular website were made aware of SGI's attempts at closing down sites with the words "Open" and "GL" in them. Siting violation of Intellectual Property, possible confusion of one of it's name brands, and lost revenue.

This apparently was not enough to ensure SGI's survival during this tumultuos time for Tech Companies. In a press conference held just a few minutes ago, SGI's spokeperson Richard Cranium (Dick Head for short) stated that letters have been sent out to millions of businesses who use the "We are Open" signs. Apparently, the letter states "SGI holds the trademark for 'Open', and unless a licensing agreement can be reached, you are hereby required to cease and desist the use of your 'We are Open' signs".

When asked about possible options to small business owners, Mr. Cranium stated "This is California, you better learn to read Spanish and just use 'Estamos Abiertos' instead of our trademarked 'Open' sign."

California Governor Gray Davis was quoted as saying "I am abierto to changes in our culture".

I had a similar experience several years ago

[koreth]

One of my domain names was the same as the name of a piece of business software. My partner and I had had the domain since 1989, at which time the software in question wasn't being sold under that name and the company that published it wasn't even on the net.

Come 1996, we got an extremely rude registered letter from the software publisher's lawyer, demanding that we relinquish the name to them or face immediate legal action.

We were both pretty irritated by the way they were making the demand, so we visited a local lawyer who specialized in intellectual property law. She told us there was a good chance the company wouldn't be able to win the name back in a suit since we'd been using it for so long and we weren't participating in the same markets they were. So we had her write a nastygram right back at them, politely telling them that we felt we had a valid claim to the name and they could talk to our lawyer if they didn't agree.

A several-week-long exchange ensued, with both sides exchanging reasons why each of us thought the name should be ours. We actually ended up filing a lawsuit against them, mostly to keep them from doing it first so we could control the venue where the case would be argued. Finally they broached the subject of buying the name from us, and that's what ended up happening -- for a sum of money several times larger than our lawyer's fees.

The irony is, if they'd made us a reasonable offer to begin with, we might well have accepted a lot less than we ended up getting, and they wouldn't have had to waste their legal staff's time. But the way they approached us at first, coming in with gun ports wide open, cost them any sympathy we might have had for them.

BTW, I'm purposely not identifying the domain (though it's possible to figure it out) just because... well, frankly, I'd rather not give them the free traffic.

So it absolutely is possible to stand up to this sort of request. You may end up losing the name, but it's also quite plausible that one serious-sounding lawyer letter in reply to their request will be enough to make them go away. It all depends on how dead-set they really are on owning all these names. On the other hand, I wouldn't bring in the lawyers until they do; if you're at the level of exchanging informal E-mail with someone there, try to keep it at that level if you can.

If they are dead-set, you can at least get something out of it in exchange. If it comes to lawsuit threats you may even be able to find a lawyer who'll take the case on a contingency basis.