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Adobe Threatens KIllustrator Over Name
Moritz Moeller - Her writes: "Evidently Adobe -- yes the Adobe that has not ported a single application apart from its PDF Reader to Linux -- sees a threat in KDE. They claim that the Koffice vector based drawing program Killustrator violates their trademark for Adobe Illustrator. Here is the mail on koffice-devel. The company demands 2500 EUR from the developer, maybe someone can help with the legal expenses here? The web site for Killuistrator has been put down for the moment.
Shouldn't generic descriptive terms like 'explorer,' 'illustrator' 'word' and 'paint' be free for all to use? Nobody called the program Kadobe! I think it is time for some pressure on Adobe ... "
It's very true that patents/trademarks are being abused a lot these days, but in this case the KIllustrator name is ACTUALLY confusing. Common word or not, "Illustrator", in drawing programs, equals a quality product.
Adobe did work a long time for that connection, and even though it may help users figure out what the program is meant to do, it's pretty much like advertising a product to the Linux community that you say is "OGPL licensed", which has nothing to do with GPL (the "O" carries with it terms such as giving up your firstborn and your soul), but you wanted to keep the name similar to GPL so people would recognize it was a license of some sort.
In their purest and most proper forms, trademarks and patents DO protect companies and products from people trying to save time on brand-building. They are not categorically wrong out of the gate.
Besides, if you make something really that good for an audience that has no other alternatives, you could name it "P1-588" and it would still be popular. The free ride on KIllustrator is ending, but if it's really that good, a defiant name change will make it more widely known.
Rather than trying to convince the trademark offices that various words shouldn't be trademarked, why can't the various open-source projects come up with more original project names? I'm sick of seeing KOffice and thinking to myself, "Oh, it's just a clone of MS Office" or seeing "GAIM" and thinking to myself, "Oh, it's a GTK version of AIM." KDE seems to be the worst offender in this category.
Not only will you avoid these types of pointless lawsuits, but you'll stop enforcing the MegaCorp's brand strength and start developing some for Linux apps. Pick an original name and quit crying when someone gives you a little legal nudge over your blatant copying of their property.
At the time Adobe registered "Adobe Illustrator", there was an existing registration for "PC Illustrator" in the same field. A few years later the "PC Illustrator" mark expired and was not renewed. A few years after that, Adobe registered just plain "Illustrator". This sequence of events suggests that "Illustrator" is sufficiently weak that any prefix or postfix, except pluralisation, may be sufficient in the eyes of the USPTO.
Is KIllustrator too close? Maybe, or maybe not. Most likely a court would rule against it because there is clear intent to ride the "goodwill" of the Illustrator mark. The above history might give you justification, though.
The smart thing to do here is drop KIllustrator like a hot potato and choose another name. There are much better places to spend our money establishing and changing legal precedents in favour of freedom and free software.
First, foremost, and most gallingly to the Slashdot-kiddie population, is that US trademark (and patent) law is based on a "use it or lose it" principle -- if, today, you fail to defend your property, you may lose the right to do so tomorrow.
This means that Adobe may not particularly care, per se, what the KDE vector-graphics product is called, but they fear the loss of their trademark more than they fear pissing off the Linux community. This does not, IMHO, make them bad or evil, just businessmen trying to hold on to the good name they've built.
Second, trademarks are not "global" in the sense that just because Ray Kroc trademarked "McDonald's" as a name for his burger chain, that doesn't prevent me from opening up a "McDonald's Auto Repair". Trademarks apply to a name or logo applied to a specific product or field of business. You better believe if I open up a roadside hamburger stand called McDonald's that the big chain is gonna land on me with both feet.
Third, what does Adobe's "Illustrator" refer to? A vector-based drawing program. What does KDE's "Illustrator" refer to? You guessed it. Similar products doing similar things means that KDE knows damn well (or should know damn well) that they're on Adobe's trademark turf.
Fourth, yes, a simple phone call might have sufficed, but a) the people who are protesting this would probably still protest even that, urging resistance and thus forcing a lawsuit anyway, and b) with reference to point 1, this may be the first real challenge Adobe's ever had on the Illustrator name, so they feel they need to act decisively to maintain their right to that name.
A final point: precedence rules over registration. This means if some guy in 1981 wrote a program called "Illustrator", not only would he have the right to continue to use the name, he might even have the right to sue Adobe to have their trademark vacated and/or assigned to him. When businesses in unrelated fields use the same name, an understanding is often reached (cf. Apple Computer/Apple Records), amicably or by litigation, that those companies will not enter each others' arenas with the same trademark (Apple Records would not, for example, be allowed to sell "Apple" computers without clearing it with Apple Computer and probably paying a license fee first).
Executive summary: Quit whining. A couple of thousand Euros is pretty damn cheap considering the goodwill that goes with the "Illustrator" name.
-- Old Man Kensey
Koffice -> KDE Office Suite
... perhaps famous sketchers or draftsmen for Killustrator, famous authors for kword, famouse painters for kpaint, and so on...
Killistrator -> VectorDraw
kword -> Scribe
kpaint -> Artiste
and so on. Rather than fighting this sort of battle on their turf (yes, it is rediculous that generic words like, oh, say, "word," "illustrator," "paint," and so on are trademarked, but these large corporations have already purchased all three branches of our government rather cheaply and hold the home-court advantage in an excess of funds and lawyers to win even the most unfair and indefensible of legal fights.
Far better to just make up unique names and spend the money that would have been spent on legal duels filing trademarks for those names instead. I'm sure numerous people would donate to such a cause.
Anyone have any better ideas for names
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Instead of complaining to Slashdot every time your blatant name ripoff is called out (GAIM, KIllustrator), why not just name your program something that isn't clearly derivative of a commercial program with the same purpose?
This is, after all, the ENTIRE POINT of trademarks -- so that the customer knows what they are getting. For someone who isn't already familiar with the applications, KIllustrator and Illustrator could very well be the same thing.
We criticize MS every time they over-use the word "innovation", why not practice some innovation of your own and actually spend ten seconds thinking of a new name.
Yes, you might be able to claim "illustrator" is a generic term, but seeing as how the program has been around for 15 years and is the market leader, I think a court would give Adobe the benefit of the doubt in deference to the consumer identification of the name with their product. They're hardly trying to stop the use of the word everywhere -- only where it is blatantly obvious that its an intended ripoff of their product identification in vector graphics application software market.
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
by having a project which is not-for-profit, and realeases source code under a free license, i am within my rights to infringe on anyone's patent or trademark or any other form of IP.
It's just rubbish. Whether or not you "believe" in Intellectual property has no bearing on whether it exists, and if it is legally binding.
Fighting the system through simple noncompliance is not the answer, talk to your govt reps, and demand action. If nobody complains, then nothing changes. The whole point of democracy is that you stand up and be heard, not just bitch and moan cuz you're not in charge.
And do you really believe that gov't cares about anything but money anyway? Well, guess who has more money? The people do, and by the way, corporations can't vote, so if you stop being a sheep and watchin all the political ads, and do something. Then the system might change. If you've never actively participated in the system ( no, just voting is not enough) then you're not doing enough to make sure you're interests are represented. Support a canidate that REALLY represents you, then maybe we wouldn't have all these cookie-cutter, do anything for a buck congressional whores deciding how we're gonna plan our collective futures.
by the way, no i'm not bitter.
-earl
Today on the trademark front, Kleenex Corp. accounced that it is issuing an injunction against Adobe, Inc. for use of a confusingly similar name for their product.
The Kleenex spokesman, a Mr. S. Notball, had this to say, "These Adobe people have gone too far. Their giving this product a name that sounds so similar to our product can't help but harm our customers. Picture this, John Q. Consumer has a bad cold, he's not feeling himself and is a bit confused. He reaches for his KLinux, thinking that he's grabbing his Kleenex. And what happens? He ends up with mucus all over his mouse, keboard and monitor! We just can't allow this sort of thing to go on."
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Actually, you can trademark common words or phrases,and obvious ones, for use in a certain context. IBM trademarked "Crash Protection" as it related to operating systems, as did Microsoft with "Windows". Oh, and "Macintosh" is a common eating apple, but both it and apple have been trademarked.
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Adobe has every right, reason, and frankly, moral justification to persue this suit. Adobe Illustrator is an established, well known, widely recognized brand name, due in no small part to the quality of the product and the boatloads of marketing money spend by Adobe. Naming a product that is a direct competetor KIllustrator, a one letter diffrence, is not just an innocent naming choice, but a blatenty obvious effort to ride on the coatails of Adobe's efforts. Adobe did it first. Adobe did a good job of it. Adobe chose to identify all their hardwork with the label Illustrator. Regardless of the legality/wisdom of trying to trademark a standard word, naming their productKIllustrator is a cheep ploy and is an excellent example of the kind of thing trademark laws were set up to stop in the firstplace. Seriously people, if Microsoft released an MS-Apache webserver the majority of the posters on this board would be demanding blood. Just because someone is an underdog doesn't always make them the good guys.
yes the Adobe that has not ported a single application apart from its PDF Reader to Linux
Heh, don't feel bad; apparently Linux isn't the only Unix platform Adobe refuses to port anything other than a PDF reader to....
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I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
I am sure that Adobe has a trademark on the "Illustrator" name. This pretty much means that it has a naming monopoly on the word Illustrator as it pertains to computer drawing programs. Appending a "K" doesn't adequately differentiate the product. Using an original name is a much better idea. There is no real way to defend what KIllustrator is doing in a court.
2500 Euro? For some guy's spare time project?Cripes.
/. be up in arms with pitch forks and torches?)
Hold it right there. If everyone here is always praising free software, then you can't turn around and claim that Adobe shouldn't treat this particular project with the same amount of seriousness as it would any other (commercial) competitor. You don't know if KIllustrator is tomorrow's wonder-project, that everyone knows about (e.g. Linux kernel). If you can sing the praises of free software 24-hours a day, then Adobe has every right to treat this as a threat, and better to take care of it now then later.
If this is how companies are going to try to kill free software, we need to establish a pool of good software names that no one has trademark claims to and nail them down.
You think?
People should stop ripping off names (and consequently, attempts at name-recognition) and do exactly what you suggest.
(And imagine if Adobe tried to rippoff the name of a free-software project. Wouldn't all of
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python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
if it has an original name, that name will become synonymous with the software's function.
Very much so.
Part of the entire problem has been that names of commonly used applications have become so standardized and entrenched in the minds of casual users that they have gone the way of Dry Ice®, Band Aid® and Kleenex®. It's just that while those took decades to permeate the popular lexicon, the names of computer applications have been appropriated by popular language in a much faster time.
Honestly, how often have you heard generic computer users say to one another words like
where both parties to the conversation completely and implicitly understand that- Outlook == email application
- Bob in marketing == dolt who opens all the
.vbs viri that flood our inboxes so often
- Powerpoint == presentation software
- Excel == spreadsheet software
- Word2000 == document processing software
- Explorer == web browser application
- MS == redundant, feel-good prefix
Indeed, if you were to use the generic terms for these specific standard applications, they would probably cause more confusion than clarity because they are used so infrequently.Face it, in corporate and consumer IT, the use of trademarked application names to describe an application is preferred. Those names have migrated into the into the public domain as the most descriptive terms for their respective applications. Their de facto usage will inevitably be sanctioned by the creaking wheels of justice by about 2018, decades after peak usage.
The use of trademarked names for common applications can only be only a source of great delight to those lucky enough to own them. What better way to insure brand loyalty than to possess the name of a standard?
This really is only a reflection of the deeper underlying problem. That is, your "standards" are Owned.
Hope you enjoy paying for them.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Adobe Illustrator is NOT descriptive. It is a vector based drawing program. Word is a Word Processor. Word is used descriptively. Word is a WEAKER trademark in this regards than Illustrator.
However, ask yourself why the KDE team named their vector based drawing program KIllustrator and their word processor KWord? It is INTENDED to capitalize on the good will of Adobe and Microsoft.
Can any of you HONESTLY say that KIllustrator isn't similar to Illustrator. It is designed AS a knock-off product with a similar name. It is INTENDED for a user to think, wow, this will be similar to the Illustrator that I know.
Why does the Free Software "community" do stuff like this? The rest of the world is comfortable competing (with a few monopolies excluded) fairly. Why does the "community" feel that they can appropriate the names of their competitors.
Linux is NOT just a play toy any more. Severally publically traded companies use it as a basis for business. Many more privately held companies use it as well.
If the whole point of "open source" was to make Free Software viewed favorably in the business community, maybe it is time to grow up.
Referring to Microsoft as M$, MacroHard, etc., does't help you.
If you DON'T care about the business world, than just ignore them and do your own thing. But if your goal is to get your software used, why don't we try acting like adults.
Companies are NOT going to adopt Linux and other "community" projects if its proponents INSIST on acting like 15 year olds.
Act like adults. You're playing with the big boys now, which is quite an accomplishment. But childishness, appropriating trademarks, etc., isn't getting you anywhere.
Declaring everything generic, obvious, and not worthy of protection isn't getting you anywhere. Microsoft is going to succeed in banning government funding of GPL'd work if they are able to paint their opponents as 15 year old intend on undermining the cause of productivity increases of the past 15 years.
The GPL turns copyright on its head. It allows cooperative based development. However, it undermines IT development companies.
First step of winning this public relations war is to act like adults. The NEXT step is to start respectfully competing. And copying everything from everyone else, including names, isn't going to convince the public that you are innovating and improving the economy. It makes you look like children.
My business is based upon various Open Source programs. The "community" earns my company and others a bad rap.
Alex
The new first-person shoot-em-up that's sweeping the nation! Use your vector and spline drawing tools to hunt down and exterminate art department interns gone BAD!
Killustrator! For Mac, PC, PSX2, and X-Box. (An unsupported Linux version is available for alpha download.)
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
They could call it Kltpzyxm, but then every user would be hurled into the 5th dimension!
People may not like Adobe just because they don't write stuff for Linux, but that is Adobe's choice. A company that is out for profit isn't obligated to write software for a particular platform just because many people feel that it's the right thing to do. This is a company that sells stock and is obligated to turn a profit. Writing this type of software for the Linux OS may not be the right thing to do for the business. Remember, this is the company that didn't write stuff for Windows until the early to mid-90's simply because they didn't think it was economically feasible.
But getting back on topic, maybe people should consider copyright infringement issues before they name their software. Being contrarian for it's own sake is silly.
It's not just the userbase, you understand, but the graphics and print culture that has to exist in Linux.
If Adobe were to port Photoshop, Illustrator, etc, to Linux, it almost requires that Linux have it's own printshop culture to sustain the growth and development efforts.
It's like asking the Japanese to import dolphin meat into the US just because we like Anime and eat sushi; there isn't the cultural support for the eating of dolphins for that to be feasible...
Geek dating!
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