Slashdot Mirror
Killustrator Author Required to Pay Two Grand
This
article
on heise-online reveals some more information on the
KIllustrator dispute.
If my understanding of the German article is correct, the lawyer firm of Reinhard Skuhra Weise &
Partner has issued a cease and desist letter to the University of
Magdeburg, employer of KIllustrator's author, Dr Kai-Uwe Sattler.
The cease-and-desist letter complains that kIllustrator's advertising damages
Adobe's brand-name and damages the reputation of Adobe's product. The lawyers
required that the University sign the cease and desist letter, destroy the
kIllustrator-package, name every KIllustrator user, and disclose the profit
they made from it. Finally the lawyers sent a bill for 4686 DM (German Marks, approximately 2000 dollars) not counting value added tax. Should the University not sign,
the lawyers will sue for a million DM (approximately 400 thousand dollars) .
Kai-Uwe Sattler is happy to change the name, but doesn't want to pay
this bill. When he suggested changing the name, the lawyers rejected his proposal saying "Do you know any lawyer who works for nothing?" The lawyers insist on
payment. Sattler regrets that Adobe never contacted him before calling upon
lawyers to ask him to change the name of his software.
Udo Skuhra, who works at the lawyers' firm, refused to talk to heise-online
about the cease-and-desist letter, and refused to state whether Adobe asked his law-firm to issue it.
Update: 07/04 03:30 PM by S :Joerg from Germany sent us a small correction: Apparently the lawyers want any packaging of KIllustrator destroyed, not the project itself. Perhaps they think it comes in a box?
Does anyone know the German legal system to know if this is simply a shakedown or a serious matter? Do law firms regulary chase claims without consulting the property owners? A $4000 threat really seems pretty petty. Would any law firm bother? I would think any firm retained by Adobe would be a little more agressive in protecting the brand and a little less in getting a pittling $4000. Not that I agree with ripping another company's brand name.
Do you really want to help this guy? Ditching the acrobat reader isn't going to help him one bit. If you want to help him YOU MUST SEND HIM MONEY. Be high and mighty about your open source ideals, but when they bankrupt the poor guy and destroy him all you'll still be doing is using XPDF and thinking you made a difference.
Are you a lawyer? Take his case for free. Are you not a lawyer? Send him money to pay the lawyer bill. If you really want to impress upon the world the size of the open source movement, make this actually count.
I'm doing my part -- here
I hope others in the audience will do their part as well.
-- Guges --
Just change the name and do NOT pay. If you change the name they can't sue you, if they haven't already. If adobe employs lawyers THEY have to pay them - not the other party.
...
It's a simple as that! You can ask a lawyer
Prithee, what be this "XWindows" of which you speak? Aye, 'tis X, X Window System, X Version 11, X Window System, Version 11, or (deary me) X11. Furthermore, "X Window System is a trademark of X Consortium, Inc." Anywayz, it prolly wouldn't be none justified if the X Consortium or there damn lackeye bitches popped a cat* in Billie G's lame excuse for a mule, seein' as how Windows 1.0 is about the same vintage as X. Now ActiveX for Windows System Agent Version 11.0, that's a whole nother bawl of most exquisit eucalyptus-entwining passifloraceaen tendrils.
Truth, honesty, and integrity in all of our dealings with other people allow us to always be proud of our association with Adobe.
WTF is that supposed to mean? They like playing with themselves?
There is a whole wave of lawfirms writing this type of bitchy letter to people on trademark infringements. The best known example at the moment is the word "Explorer", which has been licensed for all uses in a software context by a small little company in Germany, and this company is now suing everyone who uses the word "Explorer". MS paid them a licence fee - too much hassle to mess around. It gets better - they are writing cease and desist orders to anyone LINKING to a package called explorer. So, if you have a link on your homepage pointing to "FTP-Explorer", you get a nice little letter, with a lawyer's bill for 1859DM (about 900 USD) enclosed to please take it down. Some lawyers' names tend to be connected to this practice a lot. In german law this is all above board - and the law is still VERY lost.
At least in the US, the trademark that was granted is ADOBE Illustrator. Serial number 73657866. Draw your own conclusions :).
After seeing too many of htese sotries, i would suggest that any independant programmer form a LLC (limited liability corporation) to be the legal representation of your work. This way, if you are sued, the LLC will be named in the suite and any dmages they manage to collect will be the comanyies, not your personal assets. REmember, lawyers are in it for the money and will work both sides of the fence.
I find it curious that the lawyer would not disclose whether Adobe had asked them to pursue this matter.
There is a trend in the United States (for twenty years or longer) for lawyers to "create" cases (usually class action) which are generally greatly to their benefit and not much benefit to anyone else. The tobacco cases are not the best example, but along the same line. One example (without specifics) is the suit over (video)monitor sizes. A case went forward complaining that consumers were deceived by the size specs for monitors - a 14" monitor might only be 13.2" (both the spec and the actual size are diagonal measurements).
The case was won. I and many other consumers were offered something like a $9 coupon toward our next monitor purchase, or $7 cash (IIRC) back if we could prove that we bought a monitor (a variety of brands) within a specific time period. (This was at a time when a 14" color monitor was still a $300 item, IIRC.) (It's possible the offer to the consumer was somewhat higher, my memory is very hazy -- it was just not enough to make me pursue looking for proof of purchase or going out to buy a new monitor.)
Was anybody really harmed by the deceptive measurements? Was any consumer really not aware of what he was getting -- I mean, most people saw a working monitor before they bought one. I'm not saying the exaggeration of monitor size was proper, but who was hurt and who benefitted from the case? The lawyers manufactured a profit out of thin air. The manufacturers paid the lawyers, but made their money back if they stayed in business (and none of them went out of business because of this issue, AFAIK). And, if you go into Best Buy or Circuit City today and ask for a 19" monitor, guess what size it's going to be!
Anyway, I saw the fee the law firms collected -- don't really have any recollection of what it was, but it was big.
Law firms look for cases like this to keep their business' going!
Is there any chance this lawyer acted independently of Adobe? If I were the "defendant" in this case, I'd try to find out. If Adobe denies their involvement, I wouldn't pay the lawyer's fee, because I don't think they'd have legal standing to bring the action they did. (IANAL) It seems that Adobe should be willing to answer the question -- anybody want to take the time to put the question to them?
No. Tell them to bear their own cost.
Trade Mark means a mark used in *trade*. As far as Killustrator the free software is concerned, there is no trade involved as no money changes hands. Possibly a case of passing-off, which would be much more difficult on Adobe's part to prove. The case is not as clear-cut to Adobe as previous comments suggest.
cbroglia@adobe.com
He's the PR rep for Adobe and their Illustrator product. Be polite but firm.
Quote:
Conduct business on the highest ethical basis
Life is too short to be ashamed of anything we do. Truth, honesty, and integrity in all of our dealings with other people allow us to always be proud of our association with Adobe.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH!
Would never work. My ex-girlfriend has prior art.
http://bitey.net/mirrors/killustrator-0.7.2.tar.g
- A.P.
--
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Well, if you're an American citizen, you are part-owner of one of Adobe's biggest customers: your government.
.pdf format, created with Adobe products?
Ever notice how many government documents -- federal, state and local -- are in
You may want to politely tell your employees (AKA government workers and elected representatives) that you would appreciate it if they stopped using *your* money to support Adobe.
- Robin
I've had Ghostscript gag on PDFs in the past. You probably want to use xpdf.
Adobe should pay the fine on behalf of KIllustrator and promise not to support a lawsuit by this parasite law firm with the agreement that the package is changed to a non-infringing name.
Letting crap like this slide will damage Adobe's image more than use of the 'Illustrator' name ever did.
DCMonkey
Amen brother. If they don't step in and fix this situation very soon, they are gonna lose *WAY* more than two grand. It only takes purchases (or lack thereof) of one or two customers for Adobe to lose money.
Show some good will Adobe. Pay the lawyers yourself. Earn back some of the respect you have already lost.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
"Take a long hard suck on my arse" in german?
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
This appears to be a much earlier program bearing the name Illustrator. I think this was what someone was referring to earlier. It's certainly an example of a product using Illustrator as a generic term in its title (much as KIllustrator does).
John
John_Chalisque
No reason you can't use corporatism against them, and it only costs about $100 to make Adobe spend far far more.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer. Don't actually do this unless you get a real lawyer's opinion.
Where I used to regard someone like Adobe with complete and utter apathy, I now regard them with hate.
There's a difference between protecting their brand and being insane. They turned a situation that could be solved effortlessly into a messy legal battle. Does anyone doubt that the developer would have just changed the name if Adobe had come along and said "Hey dude, cool stuff, but we're kind of peeved that it's named 'Illustrator', can ya change it? We spent gazillions of dollars promoting the name 'Illustrator' and we feel kind of taken.'"
Christ, this is enough to make me want to infringe on one of their brands just out of retaliation.
Hmm. Could they feel threatened by open source?IIRC, they used to even recommend the Gimp when users asked them to port Photoshop to Linux.
If so, I have to tone down my criticism of Adobe in the previous Slashdot about this issue because, well, lawyers are lawyers, and what they don't...
To my thinking, it changes nothing. Adobe has the ability and responsability to choose it's lawyers and lay ground rules for them. If they believe that this is the wrong behaviour, they also have the right and responsability to call off the dogs and apologize. They haven't done that. From that fact, I conclude that they approve of what is happening. I will change my mind when they take some positive action to remedy the situation.
If we excuse corperations for what their semi independant lawyers do, we must excuse organized crime bosses for what their semi independant agents do as well.
Frankly, the whole thing sounds more like a mugging than anything else.
If someone tells me there are programs called KIllustrator and the GIMP that work as well as their Adobe equivalents and cost considerably less, then I will no doubt be strongly tempted to quit shelling out hundreds of dollars to Adobe. Sounds to me like KIllustrator constitutes competition, and threatening competition at that.
The real question in trademark infringement is would you accidentally buy (or even download and use) KIllustrator because you thought it was Adobe's product? Also, the related question: Was KIllustrator named that in the hopes of creating such confusion?
Meguesses some lawyer not understanding of this concept of "free (as in beer) software"...
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Adobe does have the right to go after Illustrator names, but asking for cash as well as the destruction of the source code, the list of users and the profits that have been made on it is beyond stupidity.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
If anyone is demonstrating immaturity, it is you.
The damages in this case certainly aren't obvious. An American civil court judge might just laugh this one out of the courtroom.
Then again, such crassly legalized extortion might be more tolerated in Germany.
Spending 15 minutes to fill in the blanks on a cease & desist form letter doesn't even add up to $200 in lawyer-welfare.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This is a degree of fraudulent billing worthy of disbarment and arrest.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Monitor vendors committed FRAUD, end of story.
They rightfully deserved punishment. If some slimey ambulance chaser was the one to finally see justice done, then that doesn't really matter. Justice was ultimately done even if there were no defendants getting visibly wealthy.
Criminal enforcement should have picked up on this but they didn't bother. The promise of personal benefit encouraged a "sleazy lawyer" to take up the slack.
Computing is rife with clueless newbies that are going to take a salesman or manufacturer at their word. It is unreasonable to expect consumers to need to take a tape measure shopping in order to verify product claims.
People were getting shortchanged for years.
Now, if Adobe suffered any actual damage from KIllustrator, then Linux has been successful beyond belief.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No warranty, not even fitness for a particular purpose should have been enough but unfortunately the GPL doesn't protect you from reality.
Just as the MPAA beat the shit out of the kid in Germany, Adobe will beat the shit out of this next kid in Germany, and after that users will start suing programmers for bugs. It's not about licenses. It's about money.
Opinions are mine only and could change without notice.
Obama 2012: our incompetent asshole is slightly less of an incompetent asshole than the other incompetent asshole !
Pulling this kind of stunt makes Adobe look really bad. It may be acceptable by German law, but in most of Adobe's markets, they look anti-education and anti-individual. If US art schools see this and decide they don't want anything to do with Adobe, Adobe stands to lose much more than $1 million from the schools and students who would learn to use their products. So the logical thing for Adobe to do is pressure the lawyers into dropping the case, and maybe pay them for their efforts in getting Killustrator to change its name.
"Do you know any lawyer that works for free?"
No, but I know of a lot of programmers that creates software for fun and kudos. Maybe lawyers should consider something like open-law?
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
I think the commercial software world has hard time understanding this "free software" thing.
From one parody of a fascistic security adminstrator, during the war between workers and The Management: "Despite of all of our regulations regarding the corporate network, we found one of these strictly forbidden 'Linux' CD-ROMs from behind the painting in the conference room. We will contact the operating system vendor and try to find out who owns the license to this copy."
I can see it now: A massive operation to find every possible killustrator user, requiring much cooperation from ISPs to find out who downloaded a copy...
The way they are handling this shows a tacky, tasteless company. I will never buy, nor use, any adobe products again, as far as I have control of it. And I will discreetly recommend against them to all of my clients. If I succeed, that alone should cost them over $2000 in the next year. We have incredible influence over many buying decisions. If we all do the same, we should be able to make this cost them many many times that amount. (Just don't cut off your nose to spite your face).
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
...doesn't mean you're exempt from it.
Frankly, Adobe's got a solid case, as others have pointed out. And while sending this sort of extortionary demand letter is a more common practice in Germany than the US, it could happen here too - there is due process, and it's called the court system. Adobe's counsel is just making their settlement offer up front - something they could do, IIRC, in the USA if they wanted.
If the professor thinks they have no case, he can go to trial. If he won't pay the settlement and won't show up at trial, Adobe wins by default and the professor will have a judgement assessed against him by the court.
Basic knowledge of trademark law, and a willingness to abide by it, would have saved this guy's bacon. Too late now, but let it be an object lesson to other developers out there.
Me, I'm leaving the tech industry to go to law school. Seriously.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
The lawfirm's playing a nasty trick allowed by German laws- it appears they didn't send the sharks on the developer, they did it upon their own initiative. Adobe looks bad, the law firm looks even worse- and the poor schmuck gets stiffed quite a bit of money.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
i.e. The dog bites you once vs. mauls you...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Right? I've seen the opposite happen in the places I've worked at and elsewhere.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
While I agree in principle, I don't think I can agree that "Illustrator" is generic when it comes to naming software simply because it's a word that existed in the language already--and it seems to me that's ultimately the case you're making.
I'd submit that Illustrator isn't a "generic" description. Generic description would be "Adobe Vector Drawing Program"--or even "Adobe Draw," which, indeed, has precedents similar to the ones you cite: Mac Draw, Corel Draw, Lisa Draw, Cricket Draw (for those of you with long, long memories). But "Adobe Illustrator" seems to be in the category of names like "Canvas" (Deneba), "Freehand" (Macromedia) and "Expression" (MetaCreations, now reverted back to Creature House). All of those words were, and are, relatively common English words, too--but they don't refer to a class of computer graphics programs. They refer to specific computer graphics programs, all of which have been in production for a decade or longer.
While I don't condone Adobe's handling of this (or the approach of allowing lawyers to handle it this way for them, if that's what happened), this is not a case of a company just laying claim to a common word and trying to sue anyone who uses it. This is a case of a company, or their agents, seeing another program in the same field as theirs using a name which is deliberately similar to the name that refers specifically and only to their product in that field.
WARNING: Also I have studied the German law, trademarks are not my specialty and I give no guarantees about the content of this post. (IANAL yet, too)
There are some mistakes in the descripition of the German Law system you made.
Abmahnung is just "cease and desist". Quite okay if you ask me. They can normally only be send out by the holder of the right that was violated (the trademark). But the BGB knows the so-called GoA - Geschäftsführung ohne Auftrag. It allows you to act on behalf of someone if it is clearly in their interest. In this case I can see problems for the lawyers if they did not contact Adobe first, because their actions have cost Adobe a lot of PR, not exactly in the interest of Adobe.
The 4600,- DM are probably derived from the "Streitwert" the estimated contested sum that would be fought about in court. Proabably the "Adobe Illustrator" trademark was considered to be worth millions so the legal fees are calculated from there after the German "BRAGO" - BundesRechtsanwaltsGebührenOrdnung - (try babel on that one) a state imposed billing statute for lawyers.
There have been decisions in the past, that sending out multiple form letters to trademark violators does not entitle you to full compensation with BRAGO fees for every case.
Finally the German legal system does give you the right to claim your own legal fees from the losing party before court. (Therefore the BRAGo, can't get more than that from your opponent). This is nice, because poor people can sue before the courts -- unlike in the US of A.
--
Moritz
If you don't issue any warning and come down on anybody who "infringes" like a ton of bricks, the number of repeat offenders is likely to be low.
I don't necessarily AGREE that this is anykind of infringement, but I can see how that might be their strategy.
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
The net effect of this entire situation is that it casts Germany in a very bad light. People are calling for boycott's of Adobe. Since this seems to be more a problem with German law, why don't we just boycott Germany instead.
nah, x was before no x it should be the other way around.
Ernest J.W. ter Kuile
Start packing. I can think of instances down here (So. Fla. ) that I've read about in the paper where businesses have been sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act (I do believe, this was a while ago). The gist of it was, the suits were not nessecarily asking the business to make the changes req. by the ADA, just asking for damages, say $2000, or so, to settle the suit.
I'm about the fall into the classic Slashdot trap of offering armchair legal advice, but hey, everyone else is doing it.
Change the name of KIllustrator. While the name 'KIllustrator' may be defensible, it will be hideously costly to do so. Change it.
Other than that, I don't see the authors/University as obliged to do anything else. I hope German law isn't too different from US law in this respect. Absent a court judgment to the contrary, the legal fees incurred for drafting the threatening letter are Adobe's responsibility, not the victim's.
Under no circumstances should the author or University turn over a list of users (assuming such a thing exists). They have absolutely no call to make that demand.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Also take note that this is certainly the first "killer app" for Linux.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
The name is not K-Illustrator, it is Kill-ustrator. This is a clear reference to the different sides taken during the US revolutionary war.
:)
Thus, it is commonly expanded to Kill-us-a-traitor. Clearly Adobe wouldn't want to be associated with anything this appaling, thus it couldn't be an infringment on any trademark they hold.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
In relation to their current strong-arm tactics against open source, Microsoft may have been somewhere behind this - finding a loophole in German law that could theoretically scare a lot of German developers from doing open source from the mere fears of lawyer fees. There's a lot of Open Source developers from Germany.
But, I dunno, even to me that sounds rather paranoid. None of the people that are after me have said anything about this... :)
But if you read the post I linked to above, you'll see that it is extremely unlikely that Adobe even did hire this firm. In Germany, any law firm can send these letters; regardless of their relationship (or lack thereof) to the real owner of the trademark. And they're then legally entitled to charge a processing fee for the letter. That's what the $2,000 is for. It's a racket.
Before you send that letter, read this post from a German citizen. It would seem that this is an independent law firm engaging in purely self-interested behavior.
Honestly speaking, that's probably an overestimate.
The demands besides the signing of the cease/desist are impossible to meet on the university's part, and if the litigators don't already know that they will be whacked with the cluestick soon enough.
For those of you truly boycotting Adobe products, I'd like to suggest some replacements:
For Illustrator, CorelDraw. It's easier to use and more powerful. Much more powerful.
For Acrobat Distiller: JAWS PDF (formerly 5D PDF). Produces better-quality PDF, though with slightly larger file sizes.
For FrameMaker: Ventura Publisher. Ventura has a *much* better UI, more power, and comes with more useful helper applications. Indeed, Ventura is the best long-document layout software available, bar none.
For Photoshop: Corel PhotoPaint or PaintShop Pro. PhotoPaint does much more than Photoshop, though with a slightly odd interface; PaintShop does 90% of what Photoshop does. Oh - and there's also GIMP.
For PageMaker, CorelDraw or Ventura Publisher. CorelDraw is better for artsy-fartsy shite; Ventura is better for more traditional layout.
For InDesign: CorelDraw, again. I'm assuming no one is foolish enough to attempt to use InDesign for long documents: if you are, do yourself a favour and use Ventura. You'll thank me endlessly for that advice.
That about covers all the major Adobe applications.
In *every* case, the alternatives are better than the Adobe product.
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Quark? LOL. You *GOTTA* be kidding.
Quark has a barely useable interface.
Quark is so lacking in power that you gotta add *thousands* of dollars worth of add-ins.
And even then, it doesn't have the features and power of CorelDraw (for very short docs) or Ventura (for long docs).
Sorry, bud. You're the one smokin' crack.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Framemaker is the "damn book publishing program."
I'd agree with your assessment of it. And Ventura is the better replacement for it: much better UI, and some important features that Framemaker lacks.
Several textbook publishing companies, several TV guide companies, a lot of catalogue publishers, a few book publishers, and almost every bible publishing company use it.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
You say it yourself: you aren't familiar enough with CD or Ventura to be able to say anything intelligent about them.
p df for an even-handed (no, really, it is: it's very factual and thorough: there is no apparent bias) comparison of Quark, PageMaker, FrameMaker and Ventura.
Important things Quark falls down on:
* multiple undo
* customizable menus
* document zoom
* snap grid
* mixing page layouts in a single document
* straddle paragraphs across columns
* good text frames management
* relative frame anchoring
* multiple-colour gradient, PS, vector fills
* decimal tab align
* all caps, intercaps, small caps, etc
* rotate paragraphs within text flow
* external file linking
* conditional text
* footnote/endnotes/sidenotes
* text fills
* hanging punctuation
* custom underlines
* fully customizable line styles
* fancy-ass bitmap graphic filters
* NO built-in table support
* No cross-referencing
* Limited graphic import formats
* No impositioning
* No print bureau profiling
* NO built-in HTML support
* NO built-in database layout support
* NO links within PDF output
* Limited colour systems support
* NO built-in equation editor
* NO scripting
Some of the things it lacks can be made up for by buying extra, expensive software. And many of the things it lacks can not be added. And many of those lacking features are a godsend to doing professional work.
ftp://ftp.coreluser.com/coreluser/CU65TBL1-LTR.
Face it: you're outlook is severely limited by your familiarity with a *single* product. If you were to free your mind and start doing some research into the features you need and the software that best fulfills those needs, you very likely would never conclude that Quark is the best tool for the job.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
So you basically agree with me, particularly as v5.0 doesn't yet exist.
Quark v5.0 will, indeed, be a good improvement. That still doesn't deny that out-of-the-box, there is better software available.
It would currently take over $10000 in add-on software to bring Quark's capabilities up to par with Ventura... go, price it out: I state the truth here.
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"If it's so inferior, why is it used like it is?"
a 8
For the same reasons they used Win3.1 instead of OS/2 or MacOS? For the same reason they use MSPublisher instead of FrameMaker or Ventura?
Because, I suspect, they don't know any better. And many of whom naively believe that their school is teaching them with the best tools, when the reality is they are taught with whatever tools the school can get for free.
[rather long description of how long-doc publishing is made easier by VP, snipped because Slashdot is being a pain in the ass... maybe it'll like a shorter message]
Anyway, try this URL: http://www.coreluser.com/html/vent_table.h tml
(it was working earlier today...)
Also, the Ventura user's group, should you decide to make a go of it:
news://cnews.corel.ca/corel.graphic_apps.ventur
(and if you're doing single-page sort of layout, you'll need to find an enthusiast for Corel Draw, PageMaker, Illustrator or the like. I'm afraid that's just not my gig.)
[bloody slashdot is making it difficult to post responses these days. over 30 submit-button hits to get this in...]
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Illustrator \Il*lus"tra*tor\, n. [L.] One who illustrates.
Sounds like a generic term to me, I guess its easy to go after the little guy.
Discreet's Combustion combines the functionality of Photoshop with that of Final Cut Pro. Video and still image editing and compositing, including the ability to use Photoshop filters jut by dropping them into a folder. Pricey, but very kick-ass.
Congratulations, sir! You obviously possess the necessary qualifications to serve as Vice President of Product Development at Corel. Please report to your office at 8am sharp, Thursday morning.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
But "Killustrator" and "Illustrator" are different words. If someone owned the trademark "Rust", would that stop anyone using the words "Crust", "Trust", "Krust" or "Thrust" as product names? If not, then why is "Killustrator" not allowed?
But 2000 pound coins would be allowed, as I believe that (like the pound note before it) the pound coin has no upper legal tender limit.
Can their not truthfully claim that all of the packaging has been destroyed? There were zero boxes to start with, and all zero have been destroyed.
If the lawyers want to be paid, they should be paid by their clients (ie whoever engaged them to do the work.) If anyone (lawyer or otherwise) performs unsolicited work then they should accept the risk that nobody is going to pay for it. In the same way as the charities which send out unsolicited Christmas Cards/Calendars etc accept that many people will keep them without sending payment (donation).
Personally, I *wish* a good lawyer would help for free on this issue. Adobe needs to get slapped for this, since "Illistrator" is a common word. I was considering to upgrade Photoshop, but not anymore. Is there *any* viable options to Adobe's product(s)? (on both the Mac and PC)
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
it'll cost them far more to cash that lot!
Yup. And then you have no profits, so they can just take your product. Thanks for the all the hardwork Fellas!
I notice that none of their bios mention any IT Industry skills or IT trademark skills.
Clueless maybe?
Hope they've paid the royalties for the use of GIF's on their website.
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
A little trademark search for the word "Illustrator".
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
Dude, linking to a product page doesn't prove said product is well known.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
--
Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness.
It seems that Adope pigheadedly refuses to put style sheets for some unknown reason; if they had style sheets, Illustrator would really be the goddammed best program around. Without, it's just a nice doodling pad. Granted, with artists, Marketroids can sell them ANYTHING since the artists don't know better - this is why AN ENTIRE INDUSTRY (pre-press) HAS BEEN STUCK WITH SUCKY MACINTRASHES, because it WAS SOLD to them.
As of Corel Draw, it seems powerful enough and I quite liked it, until the files would start to disintegrate with time as the Windows bitrot would progress on the system...
However, for web-based work, I'd say that Fireworks is worth looking at; it's a strange cross-breed of Photoshop and Illustrator, with animation frames added (that makes a 4D arrangement of drawings: the normal [X,Y] coordinates, PLUS the [Z] layer, AND the [alpha?] animation frames). But don't use it for print-quality 300 dpi pictures, because, then, it crawls like molasses in liquid nitrogen!!!
--
Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness.
I would be curious in knowing whether the company that supposedly harmed (Adobe) can ask to have the case dropped, especially if they were not the ones who initiated it, if this 'Abmahnung' stuff is true...
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
more contact info... remember, be nice.
Press/Analyst Contact Info.
Public Relations:
Kevin Burr
VP, Corporate Communications
408 536.3021
burr@adobe.com
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I post links to stuff here
San Jose Corporate Headquarters
Adobe Systems Incorporated
Tel: 408-536-6000
and remember, be courteous, and follow the advocacy howto. be polite when you ask if they know what their lawyers are upto
---
I post links to stuff here
When did they buy the name, and from whom? Webster? I distinctly remember another program called Illustrator released aeons ago: You used it to make graphical illustrations to text adventures written in the Quill game-authoring software. This was back in 1984-85 or so - how old is Adobe's product? Can Gilsoft go after Adobe for infringement?
There is a manual of sorts for Illustrator here. Those screens are from the most popular version, for Sinclair Spectrum (recognizable from the font.)
It's Adobe's fault for choosing a generic word as the name of their product. You can trademark "Adobe Illustrator" but not "Illustrator", that's just a fact. OK, well that doesn't stop these assholes from trying to turn the oversight of some incompetent clerk at the PTO into a piece of ill-gotten intellectual property for themselves by leaning on some defenceless open source programmer who's just trying to make the world better for everybody. Personally, this makes me sick and I for one have lost every bit of respect for Adobe. Can I translate that feeling into action? You bet I can, and by the usual means: coding them out of existence.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Keeping their silence about it amounts to the same thing.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Everyone who uses KDE should send them an email...*grin* from their contact page: RSW@Isarpatent.com
Obviously, the lawyers haven't got the faintest clue what their doing (other than the usual protection racket sort of thing).
Offer, instead of the flat $2000, to settle for license to keep the KIllustrator name for 30% of the profits from it. :-)
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Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
in Germany, you're not allowed to use unfair adverts; 'unfair' is considered anything comparative
You are (now) allowed to use comparative advertising. However, you must be able to back up your statements about the other product you compare your own product to.
So you cannot make a generic comment such as the American Coke/Pepsi ads, you have to be very specific when you use comparative claims.
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You may like my a cappella music
about destroying the package
The German article speaks about "packaging" as in "box", and the author points out: Yes, these lawyers think that Killustrator is a packaged product in a cardboard box. They want these boxes to be destroyed.
Funny, isn't it?
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You may like my a cappella music
Sorry you missed the largest applications. you only counted the low paying fodder they throw out to the public...
Premiere - The Video editing suite used today. Solution? Buy an Avid.
After Effects - The Special effects for video production.. Solution? The AVID again...
And that damned book publishing program... Version 6.5 is current.. Arrgh I cant remember it... Although I do have 50 floppies for installing it on one machine (real ones from adobe)..
Those 3 apps plus Photoshop are what makes adobe money. The other apps are just their bubblegum apps for the kiddies at home/people who think they know what they are doing.. The Graphics dept at work laughed at us when we offered them illistrator.. they asked if we wanted them to start working with crayons too...
Luckily, the AVid blows away anything adobe dishes out for video editing. (Except I have to give up my cult effects plugins... WAHH!) Time to ask skywalker studios how much for their AvID effect plugins...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
First off there is a major difference between a trademark of a unique name and a generic term. Things like Windex and Klenex are obviously pretty unique while things like Windows and Illustrator are pretty generic. If they had been named Windex Cleaner or Kleenex Tissues and someone made a product called KCleaner or KTissue would they be stealing their name? What next, going to let Microsoft sue over the XWindow name? Or maybe Microsoft and Microprose should have sued each other over daring to steal the term 'micro' from each other just because they both wrote software for micro computers.
Also FreeMWare changed their name to Plex86 some time ago and the VMWare code was 'borrowed' in part from previous code written by those leading the Plex86 project so they'd be quite stretching things to try to challenge over the name simularities.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I guess I think 'Adobe Illustrator' is just fine as a name for a program and a program named 'k adobe illustrator' would obviously be in the wrong. However the term 'illustrator' is very generic and is a term that is very obvious in that it describes the purpose of the program. This seems to me to be more along the lines that both Corel and Microsoft have an Office Suite. One isn't an Office Box of Programs.. because that would be confussing. Both are office suites and each is made by it's prospective owner and it's rather difficult to confuse the two unless your a complete idiot. In similar manner you can have Pacific Light & Power and Atlantic Light & Power and despite the name simularities it's easy to tell the difference and because of the simularites you know what each is supposed to be. Generic terms should not be allowed to be trademarked because they make it easier for people to understand a product.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Cordelia Chase: "You were just blood-sucking demons. They are lawyers!"
Freehand 10 is native on OS X and Illustrator is not. Now I have a Reason to switch instead of wait. Bad move.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
I just checked through their website and can find no mention of this lawsuit. Also on the main page of their corporate page it mentions that they have annual revenues of over 12Billion USD. And it's main headquarters are in San Jose, California. So why would these german lawyers be going after this guy. Also their Company profile completely clashes with this act. Read their company info page. About Adobe
Wouldn't you just love to be able to collect damages from all those stupid sweepstakes promoters, and other barely-legal-at-best junk mail advertisers?
I suppose we already have it, actually. We call it 'class action lawsuits', and the lawyers who win can collect $100M instead of $1K. Never mind; keep your 'Abmahnung' and pray your lawyers don't decide to gang up on you.
Oh, yes, revolution works sooooo well these days. Why, just look how well it worked for Tim McVeigh!
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I think you've been watching too much Fight Club.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
The everyday usage ones are harder to defend, and are usually limited to a specific context. For instance, the software trademark under discussion isn't just on the word "Illustrator," but specifically "Illustrator the vector graphics software." This is how we can have both an Apple Computer ("Think different") and an Apple Records ("Imagine all the people..."), both unrelated to each other. If you wanted to make an Illustrator, or Killustrator, line of clothing, or brand of beer, or perhaps even a computer role-playing game about a starving artist who goes postal ("Kill-ustrator"), Adobe would have less of a legal leg to stand on. (Though it's possibly still a bit "iffy" in the case of the computer game.) Making a vector graphics program for Linux named "Illustrator" with a "K" tacked onto the front...nuh-uh. That dog won't hunt.
As for FreeMWare--yes, they did change their name. But they started out with a name only one phonic different from VMWare, and worked under that name for several months. They only chose the name, resurrecting and renaming a previous project, after they realized how well VMWare worked, and that there was nothing similar in the "free" software community. As for where they got their code from...think that would matter in a court of law? Think where Killustrator's code came from matters to Adobe? The name and the intended functionality are very similar. You cannot claim that the choice of name was coincidence. Almost any reasonable person, seeing the similarities in these names, would come to the same conclusion--the name is copied in a blatant attempt to demonstrate that the "open source" program is intended to do the same thing as the commercial program whose name it is copying. Thus, it has a potential for consumer confusion (what was that the fellow said in the SSH thing a while back? That he kept getting support requests for an SSH client he didn't even write?), and for dilution of the trademark. Otherwise, why choose a name so similar in the first place?
I've watched this trend of copycat naming with no small amount of distaste and trepidation. I do not fault people for trying to create similar programs--otherwise there would be only one OS in the world, and one word processor, and so on. It just burns me that they intentionally choose these similar names just so they show how clever they can be. "Heh...'Kill'-ustrator. That's sooo kewl!" "It's like VMWare, but it's free--so we'll call it 'FreeMWare'. What's a Freem? Who cares, it sounds neat!" And as sad as it is that the fellow has to pony up $2000 to greedy lawyers, I can't help but feel a bit vindicated that these cutesy names are finally becoming apparent as the liabilities (both aesthetic and legal) they really are. I hope people get the hint.
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Again, like I said in another post to this discussion, the problem is not someone naming an unrelated item something similar to Illustrator; it's someone naming a very similar item something similar to Illustrator. This could cause consumer confusion, and thus weaken Adobe's brand equity.
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
It's definitely too bad about the lawyers demanding $2K, as well as all those other insane concessions, but that's something they're going to have to work out between themselves. The fellow simply should have known better to begin with.
This should come as a major wake-up call to all the people who make packages with functions and names similar to trademarked programs--the KIllustrators and FreeMWares of the world: Don't mess with companies who have more money and more lawyers than you. You can complain all you want about how incredibly unfair it is, and deeply wrong, and boycott and send nasty letters all you want to, but at the end of the day, they'll win. And don't look to the Electronic Frontier Foundation or the ACLU to help defend you, either--your freedom of speech does not include the freedom to transgress others' property. DeCSS is somewhat defensible due to the ambiguous nature of the DCMA versus the public's right of fair use, but this is quite a different matter--there is no DeCSS-like legal ambiguity about trading on someone else's name to try to popularize your own product.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I take it you don't know what they charge for shipping in Germany. I'm thinking it might be a better idea if >23420 of us would send them 0.2 German Marks worth in the smallest available coins (whichever coin is in use in your country).
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
I'm sorry, illustrator is in the dictionary but painterbrush is not. What is your point.
What is a stroller? Something to stroll with.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Hmm, in my simple pocket dictionary, "illustrator" is listed as a noun under 'illustrate'. Which I guess would mean 'somebody who illustrates' or 'something that illustrates'.
Sounds pretty generic to me.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Sorry, but that's no reason to tone down the criticism of Adobe. I'd, in fact, consider it a reason to step it up. That practice is even more evil than using idle staff lawyers in the same way.
It will be quite awhile before I have anything good to say about Adobe in any context, unless I discover some clear and convincing GOOD reasons for this. And they're pretty hard to even imagine, much less believe in.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I've seen convincing evidence, though I wouldn't call it proof, that the term Illustrator was used in the names of programs before Adobe started using the name.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Adobe owns the name illustrator like a bandit owns a pass. He's got enough muscle to keep everyone else out, and can charge any toll he feels like. That's the only right they have.
I am reasonably convinced that if the parties had equal weight and were in front of an honest court the accusation would quickly be thrown out. But large companies buy their own definition of what a law means, so I don't expect that to happen.
Note the extortion: Submit immediately, and fork over only a lot of cash, or fight it and we'll strip you bare. That lays clear the morality behind this action to anyone who is willing to see it.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I doubt that even in law, presuming that both sides had equal representation, Adobe would win. I think that they doubt this too, otherwise they the bludgeon approach?
... well, one can also call them vile, I suppose.
When they open with "Drop the name and pay me cash, if you fight me, I take all you've got." I can't help be believe that their motives are amoung the lowest available.
These aren't people who are trying to negotiate to protect their rights. The closest analogy is to bandits or highway men saying "Your money or your life!".
Any person, group, company, or corporation that uses such an approach can only be called evil.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Yes, Illustrator is a common english word. But it also a widely recognized mark. When somone says "send me the illustrator files with the log art", everyone infers that they're talking about files created in Adobe Illustrator.
And if my spotty memory serves me well, adobe was the first to use the word Illustrator to describe a vector-based drawing program.
Two things strike me here. First, if the lawyers sending the letter are working for Adobe, it's Adobe's bill. The lawyers weren't hired by the person they're billing, that person isn't responsible for paying them. Second, only Adobe can take action about one of their trademarks. If the lawyers are representing Adobe, then aren't they required to indicate this on the legal paperwork? And if they haven't been retained by Adobe and aren't acting for it, then they've no legal basis for their cease-and-desist, right?
The whole thing smells somewhat of an extortion attempt.
Actually despite using KDE, if this is a trademark violation complaint bought by Adobe I am on the side of Adobe. Unless it can be shown that Illustrator is too generic then there is little excuse for the author not to change the name. When they do change the name, PLEASE, PLEASE choose something without a K on the front -I'd just like my programs to have sensible names. Something like VectorDraw would be fine and is so generic that a trademark case would fall at the first hurdle.
However, in the UK you are able to bring unreasonable charges to the attention of professional bodies. A couple of grand for a single cease and desist letter sounds fairly unreasonable to me.
German law also sounds rather different from UK law in the sense that in the UK you cannot bring about a civil action unless you have 'standing' i.e. you are directly involved in the complaint. What this means is that unless the firm has authorisation to act on Adobe's behalf it wouldn't be allowed to persue this action.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
If Dr. Sattler even remotely attempts a boycott of Adobe, in particular Illustrator, I'm sure it won't take very much to deny Adobe of $2,000 worth of revenue.
Two grand is nothing to Adobe. I can't imagine, if they really look at the situation in terms of PR, that it will be worth it to them, especially if Mr. Sattler takes this angle on it. I recognize this is coming from Adobe's law firm, but if Adobe central gets wind of what's going on, I'm sure the next cease and desist letter will come from Adobe to the law firm. :)
(This is all assuming he changes the name of KIllustrator.)
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In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
What's really funny is that it was distributed with RedHat 7.0. KOffice 2.0.1 is every now, everyone who has access to those discs or mirrors has access to it.
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
If they have not been retained by Adobe, then what they are doing is the equivalent of ambulance chasing. In the USA that is illegal. I don't know about Germany, but if it is not illegal there, then there is something seriously wrong with the German legal system.
If they were not retained by Adobe, then this law firm needs to be put down now. Writing a letter does NOT cost 4686 DM, and any more than that was not necessary in the first round.
If they were retained by Adobe, then the focus shifts to Adobe. If Adobe refuses to deny being a part of it, then it's full boycott time.
While I don't agree that "Killustrator" is an infringement, it is close enough that I do believe it would be appropriate for the author to change the name and just avoid the issue ... had he been properly contacted about the matter. Writing a letter does NOT cost 4686 DM, and any more than that was not necessary in the first round. So whoever is responsible, it is all wrong. And if neither is willing to deny it is their decision, then they are both culprits in blowing a very simple matter way way out of proportion (and our response needs to be equally out of proportion against them).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
200,000? Damn! That would be a LOT of page hits even if they spaced each download down to once an hour.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Questions:
How does the German legal system handle it if multiple lawyers send similar letters for the same issue, each demanding money? How far can that go? Can every law firm in the country simultaneously do it?
Does the German legal system allow the law firms, when acting independently like this, to carry out the lawsuit (e.g. the 1.000.000 DM threat) as well? Or do they have to arrange with the owner of the allegedly infringed property to do that? And if they are allowed to, can multiple firms do that?
I guess we (outside of .DE) could accuse the lawfirm of "Nazi practices" (how would I say that in German?). I don't know if you're allowed to make references to that past there (apparently it's taboo in France). But at least we can here in the USA (even for our own evil history of slavery).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
And, in fact, this isn't trademark infringement. Adobe's nuked their own chances of enforcing the trademark on "Adobe Illustrator" years ago. One of the requirements for a Trademark is that it be a brand name. For example, SPAM is a trademark of Hormel Foods. Thus, any reference to SPAM(tm) brand spiced meat uses their trademark. If the mark is frequently used as a noun (e.g. references to SPAM), that dilutes the mark.
So my understanding of this is that by frequent references to "purchase Adobe Illustrator today!" Adobe already lost this fight.
I'm not a lawyer... yet.
-- Brian T. Sniffen
I'm sorry, but if Adobe is innocent, they should not have paid. It would be strange to me if I had to pay for injury done by someone else in my name.
In light of this I'm surprised that they never went after GhostScript for sounding too like PostScript. Heck, GhostScript even does a better job of duplicating the functionality of its Adobe counter-part, than does KIllistrator.
As someone above said, this may be the act of over-zealous lawyers. Maybe we need to bring a law into this country (USA) that the developer must be given a warning and n days to comply before legal action may begin. Then since the country is run by lawyers I say fat chance.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Boycotts by small numbers of people (ie Free Software geeks) against large corporations are rarely successful (those who disagree are encouraged to send me press releases from Disney where they said they won't give health insurance to gays). However, in this case, we might be able to help this guy out. I think we can take away at least $2000 in sales away from Adobe.
Here's what I suggest. If you were considering purchasing Adobe products for yourself or the organization you work for, delay the purchase. If you work for understanding bosses, explain the situation to them. If you work directly with Adobe representatives (sales, support, whatever), let them know about your decision. Write an email (NO FLAMES - NO UNPROFESSIONAL LANGUAGE - NO THREATS - NO LIES) to Adobe's PR flacks, CEO, head of sales, legal team, etc*. Let them know that you are disappointed in the behavior of their attorneys and you have elected to show your disapproval by delaying purchases of their software indefinitely. Let them know what actions on their part will be necessary before you will resume consideration of their software for purchase. Note that you are not threatening them; you are explaining what has already occurred and what you would like to see occur.
Some possible happy outcomes might include:
- The lawyers representing Adobe to Dr. Kai-Uwe Sattler withdraw their demands for payment from him.
- The lawyers representing Adobe to Dr. Kai-Uwe Sattler apologize for their own actions (not necessarily on behalf of Adobe).
- An executive of Adobe apologizes to Dr. Kai-Uwe Sattler for harassing him (If you give someone a letter of marque and reprisal, you are responsible for their actions.)
- A representative of Adobe meets with Dr. Kai-Uwe Sattler to discuss their grievances.
- Adobe sends a nice letter to Dr. Kai-Uwe Sattler permitting him to use the name KIllustrator.
- Adobe ports all or any (your choice) of their products to Linux.
I think it's important to note (especially since most of us are not lawyers) that Adobe's claim may have merit. The name KIllustrator may infringe on Adobe's trademark. I don't think Adobe should necessarily have to give up the rights it has and is guaranteed by law. Feel free to disagree. Threatening and harassing an honest man, however, is simply wrong.
*Figure out the email addresses yourself; if you aren't willing to put forth some effort, you're useless.
If my memory is correct, nearly every country has limit on the number of coins you use in one payment. I know it is the case in Canada and UK, anyone knows about Germany?
A sig is redundant.
The lawyers can send their bill to whoever it was that hired them.
Sorry, but that's the cost of doing business.
As a corporation the size of Adobe, you're going to have tax bills, you're going to have phone bills, and you're going to have legal bills.
Pay them.
And if they get firm about "Give us two thousand dollars or we're going to ruin your life." Well, isn't that extortion?
eAndroid,
I have a friend named 'Android' and your name is a direct infringment of their name. It is quite possible that someone will see 'eAndroid' and confuse you with my friend, 'Android'.
Please immediately send me $2000, delete your Slashdot account, give me a list of everyone who has read your comments and disclose how much money posting on Slashdot has made you.
Thank you for your prompt response.
\//
You don't see people cleaning the window with "Kwindex" or wiping their noses with "Gnokleenex" do you?
That's because Windex and Kleenex are artificial words created specifically to be used as trademarks. "Illustrator" is an ordinary English word. There's a big difference.
If "illustrator", the word, is indeed trademarked by Adobe for vector drawing software, then Killustrator will have to go. But "illustrator" is a stupid trademark nonetheless. That's like trademarking "window cleaner" or "tissue paper" instead of Windex and Kleenex.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Yes. Lawyers should get paid, and not work for free. Nobody should work for free.
What does that have to do with Killustrator having to pay damages? Offering to change the name immediately, which should resolve the trademark issue, means that Adobe's problem is solved.
I don't know anything about German courts... but I am fairly sure that, were this a Canadian court, the first thing the judge would ask would be 'had you been notified prior to this that there was an infringement?' 'Oh, no? Then why is Adobe wasting this court's time'
if you honestly, seriously think Microsoft was behind this then you probably should be seeing a shrink.
Q: Why are there so many lawyers in California and
so many whores in Nevada?
A: Nevada had first choice.
If you once got an "Abmahnung" you can't get anotherone from someone else. So, if you fear to get something like that have a friend sending you one and you can tell them "I've been warned already!".
AFAIK the law firm has to arrange with the trademark owner in order to carry out the lawsuit. And even in Germany, you can only get sued once for the same infringement.
I wouldn't say it's "Nazi practices" but those "Abmahnungen" are very questionable as they are often used just to make money. According to German law ( which IMHO in this case is not okay ) they are allowed to do that. However, this does not justify this "Abmahnung" as many others.
The lawyers, representing adobe, want to bill the uni for their services?
I'd tell em to get fucked and go and bill their corporate master, who presumably authorised their work.
Exactly. Sure, Adobe can force him to change the name, but since they are the ones employing this firm of lawyers, they can pay them. Otherwise it becomes a form of demanding money with menaces, more commonly the tactic of the Mafia and people like that...
"That's a nice.... software program you have there. Wouldn't want anything to... happen to it now, would we?" said the lawyer, as he typed 'rm -r *.c*', his finger hovering over the Enter key."
deus does not exist but if he does
To satisfy your curiosity, I do know someone who asked me to suggest some "software for illustrations." I'm sure they'd never heard of "vector graphics creation software." Granted, most people who deal with this sort of software would be slightly more knowledgable.
Also, I do think the terms "tissue" and "glass cleaner" are in common use. When I read my comment again, I see why it would be confusing. What I meant is that there is a common, generic product description associated with Kleenex (tissues), but it is not commonly used in conjuction with the brand name to describe the product. Everyone I know would say "can I have a Kleenex," not "can I have a Kleenex tissue," or "where can I find the Windex," not "where can I find the Windex glass cleaner."
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
In fact, Kimberly-Clark does call their product tissues. They're "Kleenex Brand Tissues;" it says so right on their web site. SC Johnson Wax calls their product line "Windex Glass and Surface Cleaners." Just look at their domain name - www.windexglasscleaner.com.
However, that's exactly the point. Adobe's product is called "Adobe Illustrator." That's even how they refer to it themselves. Adobe is like a brand, Illustrator is like a generic product name (an illustration program).
Adobe : Illustrator :: Kleenex : Tissues
A product called KAdobe could clearly be confused with something from Adobe. But if I sold Mistered's Tissues, Kimberly-Clark surely wouldn't care.
Ok, ok, in general when people say "illustrator" when they're talking about computer software, they mean Adobe Illustrator. I just wanted to point out that Kleenex and Windex both do have a common product name associated with them, but it's just not in common use. Also it pisses me off that Adobe or their representative would send a nastygram with a demand for $$$ right off the bat. If I was the author and Adobe said "we think KIllustrator is going to confuse people, do you think you could pick another name?" I'd say sure. However, tell me to destroy it and pay your legal costs, and I'd tell them where to go.
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
I second this. I'm gonna do my best to completely chuck all adobe crap.. including acrobat. XPDF will cover me on the *nix side... what are my Win32 alternatives?
(please.. no bs.. it's there for a few good reasons.. none of which I can think of this very minute... oh yeah, quakeIII).
-'fester
So, anyone think that Adobe does, or might someday, trademark the concept of vector graphics and/or teh concept of vector graphics drawing software and/or the name of any vector graphics software or sub-component or feature of any vector graphics software and/or the "look and feel" of any vector graphics software or the above regarding any other aspect of any other Adobe product... etc. etc. etc.
No. IP law doesn't work like that.
IP is four different things:
Trademarks. Protects the right of a company to register a name and sell goods under it, and drag others to court if the use the same or a similar name for a similar product (the key here is to prevent market confusion and fraud). Unlike other IP, a trademark has to be actively defended to be valid.
Copyright. Protects the right of the author to publish or give public performance of a work/expression. Time limited (generally life+70). Fair use applies (time and space shifting, satire, quoting, etc).
Patents. Protects a novel idea for a limited time. The bargain is that the idea is described in a patent application, and is freely available once the patent expires. Even if someone discovers the same idea independently, the patent is valid. Can be invalidated by prior art.
Trade secrets. Protects against illegal discovery of a secret (breaking an NDA, etc). Independent discovery of the secret is legal, and so is reverse-engineering in most countries.
So, Adobe would have to patent vector graphics. Which would be difficult given the amount of prior art.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
The article specifically states that those lawyers MIGHT BE operating under instructions from Adobe. The thing is, since this is a civil issue, not a criminal issue, they don't really have to say. Basically, someone from Adobe could simply have picked up the phone and faxed those lawyers a copy of Adobe's trademark registration, and a hardcopy of the KIllustrator website.
That's all it takes, unfortunately. Adobe at the time of the article's writing wouldn't respond whether it had initiated the 'Abmahnung' or not, and the lawyers wouldn't tell, either.
Besides - think about it. Adobe would be portrayed as insufferably evil if it had taken matters directly via their own lawyers. By using Germany's somewhat lax 'I warn you, you pay me' system, they can smile benevolently and be silent without any bad press. (computer press aside)
Alex T-B
St Andrews
Hey
In Germany, we have what is called an 'Abmahnung'. This is basically a 'Warning', and can be issued by pretty much anyone who operates a law office of any kind. This 'Abmahnung' is part of the German law system; if you spot any kind of infringement on copyright / trademark or even trade law, you can issue a warning to the infringing party, and send them a bill for your costs. This is extremely common, and a whole law industry subsides on it. Usually, the infringement warnings can be quite justified, but sometimes people get overzealous in their quest for cash.
An example is if you use what's called 'improper' advertisements - in Germany, you're not allowed to use unfair adverts; 'unfair' is considered anything comparative, e.g. you're not allowed to say 'Our car has a higher top speed, better acceleration, and a lower price than the BMW 325i, the Volvo S60, and the Mercedes 230.' If you did, you'd get an 'Abmahnung', even if BMW, Volvo, and DaimlerChrysler didn't sue immediately.
So yeah, it's a sucky system. German society is very free and open in most respects (what'd be considered porn (tits, penises, etc) can be seen on normal network TV and nude beaches are very common, but the BUSINESS system and laws are stuck in the middle ages, biased heavily towards big business. (a bit like Japan, to be honest)
Sorry if this veered off towards explaining German business practices and society too much, but it's important to understand what's going on. Somebody's spotted a trademark infringement and pounced on it. And make no mistake about it: if the guy sues, he'll lose. Hell, so would I if I made a spreadsheet app called KExcel and distributed it, often as part of for-pay packages. (like Linux distros) To 'excel' is a simple word, and can't be trademarked, but in respect to spreadsheets, it can be protected. Brand dilution. It sucks, but that's how it works.
Alex T-B
St Andrews
Interesting concept -- destroy the entire package and name every user. It brings the definition of "clueless" to a whole new level.
It is the comment about "do you know any lawyers that work for free?" that tells the story.
--
Charles E. Hill
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
The German article speaks about "packaging" as in "box", and the author points out: Yes, these lawyers think that Killustrator is a packaged product in a cardboard box. They want these boxes to be destroyed.
How can you "cease ande desist" from doing something you are not doing in the first place? This makea about as much sense as trying to sue a fictional character...
Adobe have the trademarked name for Illustrator and in court Killustrator WOULD lose (Intellectual Property Law and all that) so change the name - end of argument
They would only win if the tradmark registration is valid. Without knowing the full details of applicable IP law you can't even know if Adobe have a case.
If would hardly be the first time for a large corporate sending out "lawyers" letters related to laws which don't actually exist.
Same way that software licences attempt to remove unaliable rights.
They also have a list of trademarks that have become generic.
What is interesting is that with some of these very little could stop them becomeing generic. Since they started off as descriptions of a product.
Should the obvious be any more tradmarkable than it is patenable?
there is a law in Germany that enables every laywer (maybe even everyone, I'm not sure) to 'inform' you about a breach of law you comitted and charge you for this 'service'.
IN which ase maybe the same law would allow him to charge the lawyer for the service of explaining that most of what they request is completly not applicable and impossible...
Say for 4687 DM
KIllustrator is quite blatantly a play on the name "Illustrator", and it is a product in the exact same market segment. This is a clear attack on Adobe.
The name "Illustrator" is both a pre-existing natural language word. Should these be usable as registered tradmarks?
Further it is a description of the function of the program. Again should these be usable as registered tradmarks?
IMHO if someone wants a registerable tradmark they should be expected to use some imagination with naming it.
WTF?
:"Hi we're from biglawyerfirm, and we're going to sue you for infringing trademark, but it'll cost you $2500 for us to draw up the paperwork to do so."
The lawyers, representing adobe, want to bill the uni for their services?
I'd tell em to get fucked and go and bill their corporate master, who presumably authorised their work.
Otherwise it'd be like...
"Ring" "Ring"
Me : "Hello?"
Them
Me: "What!?! $2500! For you to harass me!? No!"
Them: "Er, ok, don't worry about it then, sorry to have bothered you"
Or am I missing something here, and this is just normal (albeit pretty fucked up) legal practice?
** Windows has detected a mouse movement.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
First, OWNING =! TRADEMARK
Second, TRADEMARK(COMMON WORDS)= illegal function call.
Third, some obscure self intersested LAWFIRM =! ADOBE CORP.
Insightfull 5? Sjees
pay the 2k, then inflict 2k worth of damage upon the lawfirm. Sending bulk SMS (which the recipient pays) Send bulk FAX, hey use all black paper. Snot even illegal.
SlashDread
Hey Copyrights, trademarks are fucked, I agree
...Aside from the fact that Adobe sells no product which contains the word "paint" prominently
----
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Adobe is in the right here! It's called KIllustrator, for God's sake! Any impressionable kid could take that to be a contraction of Kill-You Castrator.
Bravo bravissimo, Adobe. Thanks for Thinking About The Children (TM).
< tofuhead >
--
It is still the dark of night.
Luckily, there's more than one axis in the political spectrum. Besides Left vs. Right there's More Govt vs. Less Govt. Have a look at the Libertarian Party for more details, esp. the World's Smallest Political Quiz. On this, I'm a bit left of center and quite a ways up the "Less Gov't" axis ;)
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
And if your product was released under an open source license, all you need to do is fork the code and carry on, so so what?
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Uh, we've seen evidence that Adobe owns the name in the United States of America. We've seen no evidence that Adobe owns the name in the Federal Republic of Germany. Until we do, it's a bit careless to say that 'Adobe owns the name'. Some parts of the world are not yet part of the Pax Amerikana.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
From what little I've seen of legal conflicts, each side tends to ask for way more than they are allowed to get. I guess they do it on the theory that if you don't ask you never get.
Much of what constitutes lawyering is actually haggling and negotiation.
And as far as not doing their research, not all lawyers are steely eyed competents. The slack is strong with all of us.
Phil Greenspun once said something to the effect that a good ivy league student probably does more research and thinking than the average lawyer.
Ineteresting that it happened in Germany and not here. This could be a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. In any case, I wouldn't pay the lawyers any money, or if you do, make them earn every penny of it.
Might want to contact the EFF.
If other types of business can't do it, then why? Doesn't this violate the constitutional principle of "same law for everybody"? Why can't other businesses offer unsolicited "services' and then send bills? Unfortunately, in this case, chances are that Reinhard Skuhra Weise & Partner exclusively makes money with Abmahnungen, so their might not be any privileged client-lawyer correspondence which could be accidentally disclosed...
The catch is, those firms do have no authority to do this, and the "fines" are entirely for their own pockets. Moreover, often if it is not even sure whether the "violation" took place at all: those threatening letters are often sent months after the alleged facts, when the shopkeeper has already re-arranged his display window since long, and can no longer determine/remember whether this or that article was correctly labeled or not.
Scams like this are regularly featured on police information TV programs such as "Vorsicht Falle, Nepper, Schlepper, Bauernfänger". If I were kIllustrator's author, I'd contact Adobe, and ask them whether this "laywer's firm" is actually operating in Adobe's authority. Chances are good they aren't.
So instead they decided to damage their reputation by engaging in mindless, heavy-handed, groundless legal harassment? Brilliant.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Wipe the software from the face of the earth. and name every KIllustrator user
So in the reply letter explain how it is impossible to even know where every copy is (unless Verpackungen translates to physical packaging, not the software itself), but the only known copies reside at the lawyer firm of Reinhard Skuhra Weise & Partner. Demand that they immediately destroy all copies of kIllustrator-Verpackungen existing in the Anwaltskanzlei.
If they don't, then they are the only ones to be in violation of their own demands. Somehow, I think the fuckheads^Wlawyers will ignore such a demand.
Seriously, this will be a test of the university of Magdeburg. If they cave in without a fight, they will never again be considered a viable school for software engineering. All potential students for the next decade will search the reputation of universities, and Universität Magdeburg will be at the bottom of the list. Certainly the university has its own lawyers, it wouldn't cost them much to fight. If they do fight this, they will assure future students of academic freedom, which will attract more of the brightest.
We shall see whether the Universität Magdeburg is a fine school, or just a doomed quivering bunch of cowardly Schafekeitfakultäten.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
no-one used the term "Illustrator" before Adobe and the KIllustrator project should actually come up with a unqiue name for their clone.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I see a major problem between part 3 and part 4, namely, Party A did not request nor commission the services of Party C. Party B did not object to the violation of trademark (maybe that consider Party A's use to be ok). My real concern here is that Party C doesn't appear to have to get a contract before they demand payment. Assumably if you dont pay then the force of the state will come into play. This is not what I call free trade.
How we know is more important than what we know.
If you're running Mac OS X, you can use Create! from Stone Designs (www.stone.com) in place of Illustrator, and TIFFany from CaffeineSoft in place of Photoshop.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Post a ton of warez links for photoshop and premiere.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
Militaristic Open Source Terrorism much like the present Eco-Terrorists we see on the news. I mean its funny to joke about but there probably are people out there who WOULD like to shoot Bill Gates and burn down the Microsoft campus. I'm sure the killustrator (ironic) feels that way about Adobe right now.
:P
Remember that parody about that gun man in the news who shot up the computer company and someone made a story where he was yelling something about a cathedral and a bazaar.
Confess to open source or be burned at the stake!
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
Public Relations Headquarters Contacts
The one you likely want the most is the PR manager for Adobe Illustrator®, Cara Broglia.
Of course, a link to the Linux Advocacy HOWTO is always in order at times like this. As cbroglia will not be reading his/her e-mail for another 10-12 hours, why not wait until then. Sober second thought, and all that.
Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
I think, Adobe will get some bad press from a certain community, so in effect the law-firms handling of the case is smearing Adobes name (they could've done with far less negative press by handling the case with a simple friendly letter, and i think the negative press outweighs $2000 for Adobe).
So if the lawyers are acting on their own, Adobe better gets a handle on this fast (Hey, its their IP the Lawyers are claiming to defend, they should have some say in the case) and does some damage control.
The only case, why adobe might really want the case handled like this is to scare away others, and scare the Maker of KIllustrator out of his wits to avoid it going to the courts (where they might loose) at all.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Apparently once you trademarked one common term (Illustrator here) that empowers you to hassle anyone using derivatives of that term too. Now there is only a limited number of words which make sense for a certain class of application, and once all common words ('Illustrate', '...paint...', '...picture...') are used up then what?
I think it's overextending the protection trademarks provide, if they can be abused to prevent any competing product from being labeled with a name that makes half sense.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
"You don't see people cleaning the window with "Kwindex" or wiping their noses with "Gnokleenex" do you? "
You are comparing apples and oranges here, Windex
and Kleenex are not common words, they are trademarks.
Illustrator is a common word.
AdFuel
Read the whole comment, then reply. Particularly the bit where I mentioned that this infringement was an honest mistake, rather than a deliberate attempt to infringe.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
They were right to defend their trademark. The way they did so, even if it's the usual way it's done in Germany, sucks like a singularity.
The right thing to do, and this is what would happen in most countries, is to bring the infringement to the infringer's attention first. If they fail to comply, then sue. Everything that Dr Sattler has said indicates that this was an honest mistake and he is perfectly prepared to change KIllustrator's name to avoid the infringement. If Adobe's lawyers had taken this course, that would have been that. There would have been some stories on the usual suspect weblog sites, possibly some flamage, but no real hurt done, just some inconvenience for the KDE folks.
Unfortunately, the lawyers chose to fight first. I accept that this is the way things are usually done in Germany, but I must say that I was shocked to find this factoid out. Germany's legal system may find this behaviour "right and proper", but I think most of the rest of us disagree.
I would never infringe on someone's intellectual property on purpose (unless I decided to engage in civil disobedience for some reason, but that hasn't happened so far). However, in my country, if that happens, I know I'll get a chance to fix my mistake. Dr Sattler did not get that chance. Needless to say, I wouldn't like to be an Open Source developer in Germany.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
But then it's still Adobe's fault, for hiring such scum. If they get enough bad press for this, they might pay him off to shut up and drop the suit.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I agree that KIllustrator should change its name.
However, the $2000 charge is absolutely unreasonable. This issue would have blown over quickly if Adobe had simply said "Change your name or we'll sue you," which is outright NICE compared to "Change your name and give us $2000 NOW or we (or rather, our scum-sucking "independent" lawyer) sue you for even more money."
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
The GhostScript PDF interpreter has been around for a long time. It's called "gv".
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I've been a pretty loyal Adobe product user for years now. Photoshop and Illustrator are two of the main apps I use all the time. These tactics really make me want to puke. Does anybody know how much Killustrator costs to buy? Does "ZERO" come to mind? How the hell is this software (which is pretty decent, BTW) hurting Adobe, in any way, shape or form? Is there a version of Adobe Illustrator that runs on Linux? One of the main reasons I'm still running that M$ shit is because of this. Yes, I know I could run out and buy a Mac w/ OS X on it. Do you have an extra $3500 laying around?
I hereby declare a complete boycott of all Adobe products. Looks like I'll be getting more familiar with The Gimp after all.
Fuck You, Adobe. You where probably put up to this by that fag, Ballmer. Rot in hell.
Dive Gear
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
MOD THIS UP!!
If this is indeed what has happened here, I guarantee that Adobe has now heard of it, and if the lawyers are acting against their interests, they will put a stop to it quickly (although probably quietly, to avoid a PR issue). The next few days will be telling.
Hey, at least Slashdot is good for something, causing a media circus when you need one :-)
Trademarks are your friend. If you don't think so, you have serious issues.
... AbiWord, for example, is another in this trend of packages that has a unique name, based on a common word.
... also common words.
...
Whether you believe in free software, free speach, or hit-them-with-bats policies, trademarks protect _everybody_, including consumers.
If you bought "Corn Flakes" and they made you ill beyond belief, you'd have a few words for Kellogs. Why? Because we all know that "Corn Flakes" are made by Kellogs, even though they're both common words. It just so happens that common-word and personal-name based businesses are the most successful, not the ones who make up "innovative" and strange names.
I respect Adobe's trademark on Illustrator and feel it _was_ detrimental to their image for someone to purposefully use that name for their competing product, something that would not be allowed between businesses, but we seem to encourage just because the software's free. There may be users who download it thinking they're getting Adobe Illustrator or some variant thereof when in fact they're getting a completely different product.
WordPerfect and Microsoft Word are very different brands, both recognised. Note that there was also WordStar
Adobe's product, however, is named "Illustrator" and not even Corel or Harvard bothered to make products with that name, opting instead for "Draw" and "Graphics"
Get over it
... PS, I think that Adobe should be happy with a change in project name, if not just to "KDE Illustrator" with a link (for really good faith) to Adobe's product page for reference.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Dear Adobe,
I feel that the Illustrator brand is well recognised in the graphics industry for good reason. I feel that you would receive a better response from your competitors, corporate and otherwise, if you simply requested that the KIllustrator project either be renamed or have an obvious statement made that it is not the "Illustrator" offering from Adobe and that it is in no way associated with your brand image.
Michael T. Babcock
CTO, FibreSpeed
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Just as the MPAA beat the shit out of the kid in Germany
If you mean the kid who wrote DeCSS, Jon Johansen is from Norway.
1. a similar product to their product with similar functions
Killustrator is not a "product" as concerns Dr. Sattler. Dr. Sattler is simply exercising his first amendment rights without attempting to sell anything. Perhaps it is a product for Red Hat, but they're not being sued.
2. has a similiar interface to thier product
Trademark does not protect functionality.
3. Is obviously designed as a freeware / low cost competitor to an existing product thus damaging and undermining their business and product line
Trademark does not protect you from competition.
4. Damaging to their existing copyright and causing confusion in the marketplace
Trademark does not protect copyright, and Killustrator does not infringe Adobe's copyrights in any way. It is legal to "cause confusion in the marketplace" in noncommercial ways, although KIllustrator isn't exactly confusing. Eg: FUD is legal, while fraud is not.
5. Also under the GPL they can go thru the code and check that no where is there any evidence of code resue or copy
True. Openness and confusion are enemies, and trademark law rides entirely on likelyhood of confusion.
6. From memory the fact that it is a non profit or for profit company makes no difference when it comes to copyright and trademark violation
Probably true. What company is targetted here? Answer: A university who happens to employ a professor who spends his free time publishing free software. The university's relation to Killustrator is hardly a commercial one.
I believe that years of corporate orientation have lead us to expect that every activity is commercial. It isn't. Dr. Sattler maintains a "free" body of expression. The fact that companies often do the same thing does not mean that Dr. Sattler's activity is commercial. The fact that an activity replaces commercial activity does not make it commercial.
Under US law, trademark protection against dilution is defined by 15 USC 1225. Germany's law is probably somewhat similar. I suspect that Adobe's trademark is registered in the US.
After reading the law (something I'd recommend for most Slashdotters), it seems to me that the claim of trademark dilution is somewhat iffy.
The key shortcoming is that 15 USC 1225(c)(1) only authorizes an injuction against "another person's commercial use in commerce of a mark or trade name" (emphasis added). Moreover, per 1225(c)(4)(B) "noncommercial use of a mark" is not actionable.
I believe that a strong case can be made that KIllustrator is not a commercial use by the good Dr. Sattler.
Even if it is somehow commercial use, then by 1225(c)(2), injunctive relief is the FULL extent of relief unless the person "willfully intended to trade on the owner's reputation or to cause dilution of the famous mark". The idea that Dr. Sattler did this seems rather absurd to me.
Thus under US law, I would doubt this case would go anywhere at all.
This guy IS getting due process. Due process means getting your day in court before having your rights/property taken away. In Germany, like America, getting your day in court can be quite time-consuming and expensive. Often, a plaintiff makes an offer-- if you agree to their conditions, they will not take you to court to try to get their way.
That is what is happening here. The unfortunate problem is that apparently Adobe is hiring their lawyers on contingency, so the only way the lawyers get any money is if the offending party gives it to them.
If Adobe is the benificent coporate entity they advertise themselves as, they'll give the lawyers 2 grand US, tell them to shut up, and accept the agreement that K-Illustrator will change its name.
If not, screw 'em. I've been meaning to learn the GIMP anyway.
--alteran
Who is RTFM and when will he help me with Unix?
Early on I emailed the KIllustrator author and told him that the name was a liability. His response was roughly, "What are they going to do, sue me?". I am in no way surprised by this and think it was moronic to name KIllustrator as such.
Stupid people get what they deserve.
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
xerox, in fact, did have a team of lawyers to defend its name. however, didn't work. the Hormel example is a better one.
Good point. And Kodak went after Paul Simon (I think I'm remembering the artist right) over "Kodachrome." But now Xerox is effectively another word for Photocopy, and that couldn't have hurt Xerox's image. Likewise, Kodak couldn't have lost money with the free advertising associated with the song.
The term "Illustrator" is too generic for Adobe to be fighting over, especially when they don't have a version of it for Linux. They don't compete in the market, how can their image be damaged? The point here, and the point of my original post was that some corporations (Hormel and "Spam" really is probably the best example) are a little more cluefull than others about what hurts their business and what doesn't. I suspect this is a lawyer's doing, not Adobe itself.
Going after someone in the Open Source community "because they need to be paid" is just . . . lame.
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
Must have been a nutcase. Really, no-one does that (dissing people for crossing the street).
:-)
Besides, Munich is the capital of decidedly Catholic Bavaria
-- KDE programmer and computer science student in Klagenfurt, Austria.
In which mentality is it considered ehtical that a lawyer who has no mandate from the injured party, goes out, and randomly demands cash from third parties? In other places, this is called extortion. Looks like this law needs some serious Vergangenheitsbewältigung.
Score 2? For an obviously racist remark? Get a life!
some karma... and kinda lukewarm about it.
I am not a lawyer! Get real legal advice! If you trust legal advice from Slashdotters, you deserve what you get!
:(
1. Change the name. Mitigate the immediate liability of using a confusingly similar name to Adobe Illustrator.
2. Notify the firm and Adobe of the change and to show good will in complying with Adobe's request for a name change.
3. Demonstrate to the law firm that KIllustrator is a non-profit venture, run by volunteers.
4. Do not release any information about users of the software. Stand your ground here.
5. Refuse to pay the *cough*blackmail*cough* legal fee. This is the cost of Adobe protecting its trademark.
6. Find a good lawyer and start a legal defense fund in case they press the issue further.
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
How in the world are we expected to check every possible name, or combination of a name that may be registered?
They din't simply send a cease and decist letter, they also sent him a bill. Open source developers usually don't make huge profits, and don't have a law firm guiding them in each step or checking every possible combination of a name for them.
It is not fair that they treat individuals working on their free time projects like they were part of a powerful corporation. Involving an education institution makes it even worse.
This is plain harassament of big bad ugly law firm against innocent individuals. Adobe should put a stop at this and settle with a name change only.
I he is still forced to pay, even after renaming (or removing) the whole project, then i think EFF *must* help him.
It is so sad that the law system can be so bad in many countries, where the individuals can be harassed out of the system in favor of the rich megacorps.
--
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
To: jcristof@adobe.com, ablatchf@adobe.com, gbabbit@adobe.com
Adobe PR,
I don't view the use of Illustrator in Killustrator as a violation of any trademark or copyright. Illustrator is a generic word in the dictionary and anyone should be free to use that word in their product name as they please. If someone named their product KAdobe Illustrator, I would see your point. As it is, there is OpenOffice, StarOffice, WordPerfect Office, and Microsoft Office, all containing the word Office! Big deal!
Your threat of lawsuit against Dr. Kai-Uwe Sattler is creating much ill will against you by "nerds in high places" like myself who can greatly influence decisions on whether to use an Adobe product or a competitors. I suggest you drop this and leave Dr. Kai-Uwe Sattler alone.
Charles Leeds
Senior Information Security Analyst
McKee Foods Corporation
Dear God I wish I had mod points...
Check out my sysadmin blog!
The question is what rights the lawyers have under German law. If they can in fact require the destruction of the project (yeah, right, the source is "out there" under the GPL so that won't work), naming the users (how the BLOODY BLOODY HELL is one supposed to know that!?!?!), and require him to pay them (what? BEFORE being convicted of anything? unlikely!), then I guess he will have to comply. Otherwise, I guess he can just change the name, thus ending the infringement, and the lawyers can just sit back and moan that there is no longer anything to complain about. Ofcourse, IANAL. Anyobody know the German law on this? /L
For Illustrator, CorelDraw. It's easier to use and more powerful. Much more powerful.
oh come on. if you think that CorelDraw holds a candle to Illustrator you must only be drawing stick-figures. though admittedly Macromedia Freehand is a completely acceptable replacement to Illustrator.
For Photoshop: Corel PhotoPaint or PaintShop Pro. PhotoPaint does much more than Photoshop, though with a slightly odd interface; PaintShop does 90% of what Photoshop does. Oh - and there's also GIMP.
do you work for Corel? that is rediculous! i've been using graphic tools like Photoshop and PhotoPaint for almost seven years and i can tell you that Photoshop is still, by far, the best bitmap editor around. and while i'm optimistic of the GIMP (especially the OS X port), if i can't do proper colour matching, colour separation and CYMK export then it's of no use to me. as it stands now there is no adequate replacement to Photoshop, unless of course you're only doing web graphics.
- j
Who's next, Adobe? Ghostscript?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The same trademark lawyers who are acting now have registered a German trademark (back in 1989, I think), not for 'Illustrator' but for 'Adobe Illustrator'. 'Illustrator' is a German word, too. In Germany, you cannot register trademarks which are describing for the product or service being trademarked. Now 'Illustrator' is certainly not describing for computer programs in general (that's the class in which the trademark was registered, with an exception of computer programs for dispersing beryllium in the atmosphere, which is kind of funny), only if you look at drawing programs. So the trademark might be effective even if 'Illustrator' is a describing term for what the program does (or can be used to perform).
The main point, however, is that the people christening 'KIllustrator' were heading for trouble from the beginning, and they should have known it. This is not some obscure trademark appearing after years, but the KDE developers were certainly aware that a program of this name existed which did the same job, basically. Even if the 'Illustrator' trademark is invalid (nobody knows at this time...), it is still a very, very time-consuming and cost-intensitive process to get it canceled. Since Adobe's lawyers seem to have targeted the university, it's likely that the university will obey and pay the fine, and then threaten to sue the responsible member of the university, so it's a even more complicated situation.
For bonus points, yell "Heads up!" at just the right moment.
Adobe is mysteriously silent about this con/blackmail scheme. They obviously have nothing to do with it, but they aren't giving out any comments. If anything, this demonstrates the true nature of the executives of Adobe.
All this lawyer has done is send a couple emails. If he chooses to take it to court (he won't) then he can ask for some compensation. If a mechanic comes to your house and says, I think you should get your carberateur fixed, that will be two hundred dollars for the estimate, thank you, what do you tell him?
dogdoo.com. They might appreciate your business.
Many large companies employ lawyers to work independently to protect what they believe to be their intellectual property, with the lawyers basically being self-funding.
Then surely they must have known that these kinds of cases would be the result? You won't escape punishment just because you use a hired killer.
Somebody takes legal action against you and you have to pay the lawyer? WTF?
Adobe owns the Illustrator name. It's not "Adobe Illustrator", it's "Illustrator".
Actually, I read on the koffice-devel mailing list that they only own Adobe Illustrator but are claiming that the names are confusingly similar. I can't find the message now, but I'm 99% sure it was from the guy who's in the legal trouble.
"I can't think of a better term for an application program orientated towards creating illustrations than an illustrator. Can you?"
An "illustrator" is someone who illustrates, someone who creates illustrations. A piece of software is not an "illustrator," it is a tool. I think "Draw" is probably the most generic term likely to be used as a vector drawing program name. It is (or has been) used by at least three commercial programs that I can remember, including the one I worked on, Harvard Draw.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
Here's a tip: the stuff after the word "brand" is what you are actually buying. It is not precisely the name of the thing you are buying. In "Kleenex Brand Tissues" "Kleenex" is the trademark, "Brand" is the word that tells you the thing you just read, (i.e. "Kleenex"), is its trademark name, and what ever comes after "Brand" is the generic class, i.e. Tissues. Think of it as species and genus.
You state that the relation ship between the words "Adobe" and "Illustrator" is the same as the relationship between "Kleenex" and "Tissues". I find it hard to believe you think this since earlier you point out that Kimberly-Clark makes Kleenex. Adobe makes Illustrator. Kleenex is a brand name for Kimberly-Clark's version of the thin slices of dried pulp that are more commonly called tissues. Adobe is to Kimberly-Clark as Illustrator is to Kleenex as vector drawing programs are to tissues.
I'm curious, have you ever heard someone refer to vector drawing programs as "illustrator programs"? (Note the little "i".) Drawing program is what I hear but then, I don't get out much. And if you think that "tissue" and "glass cleaner" are not in common use, stroll down the generic product aisle of your favorite supermarket. Or ask a photographer. These terms are *so* common that they are the name for the thing itself. That is, they are generic.
As for the lawyers being nasty, well, duh.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
"How in the world are we expected to check every possible name, or combination of a name that may be registered?"
Oh please. They called a drawing program "Killustrator" fercryinoutloud. How long did I have to search for that? ANd how could Adobe take it as anything but a taunt? But in any event, the PTO site is pretty good as are the search engines in simply finding occurances of a word. And when you hit the bigs, you can pay some specialized firm to name check for your spankin' new project. I suggest "no va".
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
So I'm guessing you use a "painterbrush" and sold the paintbrush?
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
Because "Illustrator" is a real word, and somewhat suggestive of what the software does, it is a relatively weak mark. Essentially, Adobe only has rights in the word when used with graphics software. And even a raster/paint program might fall outside of the protected space.
;-) both our positions. The person you mentioned asked for "software for illustrations." I would emphasize that they were asking for *software* not for *illustrators*. You might say that this example shows that Adobe has an improper trademark. I would say that they have a weak mark, know it, and consequently are very active in policing it.
"Windex" and "Kleenex" are much stronger marks. They are made up words, but the "win" suggests some sort of glass application and "kleen" suggests a sanitary function. (That is, they are not as strong as completely arbitrary marks like "Kodak." Allegedly picked because Eastman liked the letter "k".) Still, you would be hard pressed to use either the word "Windex" or the word "Kleenex" in conjunction with anything and not have their lawyers bearing down on you.
But you might well be able to use "kleen" or or "nex" or "dex" and certainly "win". My point is that context is everything. You cannot stop the analysis at the point you find the word in the dictionary. You have to see if it is generic or overly descriptive in the context used.
I think that "software for illustrations" shows (I originally type "illustrates"
And you are definitely right about how people use kleenex and windex. Especially kleenex. One of the real dangers for a trademark holder is that their mark becomes so associated with the underlying product that it comes to *mean* the product. That is, it becomes generic. Kimberly-Clark has savage attack lawyers that look out for using the word "kleenex" with a lower case "k". The Coca-Cola Company actually hires people to go into restaurants they know sell Pepsi and order "a Coke." If the waitron brings them a beverage without first saying, "I'm sorry, we serve Pepsi. Is that OK?", they will take the beverage out for analysis and upon determining that it is indeed Pepsi, rain down like hellfire upon the restaurant. (Though they usually let them off with an extremely long-term contract for Coke.) They do this not just because it is fun if you are an attack lawyer, they do it because "coke" (with a lower-case "c") might become a generic term. And that would cost them billions.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
As the other respondent pointed out, Adobe has trademarks in both names. I looked it up instead of spouting off. See the difference?
/. responses. You'd learn that there is nothing linking Adobe itself to these actions. Rather, it looks like some odd form of IP extortion allowed for under German law.
I assume that since you seem to think that appending a "k" to the front of a trademarked name when used in the trademark context is "really bad," you now, having been clued up on the various trademarks, think "killustrator" is "really bad."
And as long as we're cluing you in, you might want to reread the article and the
As the final stop on the clue train, if you think protecting your trademark is "fascism" and "evil," even when being overzealous, you need to correct that rectal / cranial inversion and study the 20th century's history.
OK, I'm done ranting now.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
"I'm sorry, illustrator is in the dictionary but painterbrush is not. What is your point.
What is a stroller? Something to stroll with."
Last things first: "Stroller" is both a thing for transporting very small children and a person that strolls. "Illustrator" is defined by my OED 2nd Edition as "one who or that which illustrates, in the various senses of the verb." It is not a thing. It is a thing (including a person) that performs an action. In short, "stroller" is not analogous to "illustrator." Your criticism of Adobe's trademark (BTW, "adobe" means an unburnt brick baked in the sun. Where do you sit on that trademark?) would be better received if the name of the prodcut were "Adobe Illustrating." But it isn't.
My point is that just because a word is in the dictionary, it doesn't mean that it cannot be a trademark. And just because a word is a trademark, it doesn't mean that it cannot be used by other persons. You have to look at the context. "Generic," when discussing trademarks, means that there is no other reasonable way to refer to the thing than by that name.
Take "beer" (please!) for example. That tasty beverage made from water, malt, yeast and hops. Is there a "reasonable" way to refer to beer other than as "beer"? I wrote "That tasty beverage made from water, malt, yeast and hops," above. But I cannot imagine having to say "I'd like a bock tasty beverage made from water, malt, yeast and hops," everytime I wanted bock beer. So it would be improper for someone to trademark "Beer" as a name for "beer" and then prevent other epople from using it.
But "illustrator" in the context of software is not a generic term. Is there another reasonable name for what kind of software "Adobe Illustrator" is? What about "draw" or "drawing" software? Fewer sylables (always a good thing for me), no confusion between the person performing the act and the act itself. Seems pretty good to me.
Shakespeare wrote "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" meaning that the name of the thing is not the essence of it. But when I call my new line of phased plasma rifles "Rose," I am not turning them into something that smells sweet. There is no relationship between the word rose and a phased plasma rifle in the 20 watt range. So I can get a trademark in the name Rose as applied to my rifles. And I can make somebody in Germany selling the "Krose" brand phased plasma rifle (or possibly even "Crows" due to the phonetic simularity. Tougher case.) stop selling it. "Rose" is a generic term for members of the Rosa genus. In other contexts, it is NOT generic.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
Of course it's fun! In responding to consumer demand, they'vemade the boot in dozens of flavors. My favorite is pina collada.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
"Why should the reverse (a common English word becoming a trademark for the very thing it means) be permitted?"
I think this is where we are fundamentally at odds. I agree that we (i.e. the US) should not permit common English words to become trademarks for the very things the word means. But I disagree that "Illustrator" does this. I think it is different enough, and that there are suitable, more generic alternatives to the word, from the underlying class of software programs that it can be a trademark. One of the main tests for a trademark is whether or not it has acquired distinctiveness by which they mean you think of the product when you hear the trademark. I think that when talking about graphics software, the word "illustrator" is likely to makepeople think of the Adobe product. Of course, you could have someone say "As a professional illustrator, I like program X." But distinctiveness needn't be universal.
I think "Illustrator" is a weak trademark and that a case against a piece of software that wasn't a vector graphics program but still called "killustrator" (an FPS for instance which would focus on the "kill" part), would be much harder. It is the particular facts of this situation that lead me to conclude that Killustrator is infringing an Adobe trademark.
I don't think that you think it is clear cut either. Your use of "arguably" when discussing the definition of "illustrator" indicates to me that you may think you are having to stretch your argument to make your case. Do you think that whatever level of genericness that you think "illustrator" has in this context is due to Adobe's marketing of their software? The common use of "Adobe Illustrator" as a two word name? Your points at the end about Xerox are correct. Is this what you think has happened? (I don't. Not yet anyway. But it is interesting.)
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
A couple of quick points about trademarks. You cannot trademark the generic term for the product you want to name. That is, you couldn't get a trademark for the term "pencil" as applied to pencils. You cannot have "Pencil Brand Pencils." Duh. Notice, however, that I did not say you couldn't get a mark in a generic term. "Apple" is a gerneric term for the fruit of the apple tree. So no "Apple Brand Apples." But you may have heard of "Apple Computer." "Apple" is not the generic term for a computer so this is OK! You (or rather, Apple) can have the trademark. But you can't stop me from calling the fruit I harvest from apple trees "apples." And I can take "Apple Cars" in NYC which I can call the "Big Apple" as much as I want. Huzzah!
The word "apple" is a weak mark because it is so commonly used. But as applied to computers it is very strong. Trademarks run the gamut from those that are so weak they suggest what the underlying product is to those that are completely made up and thus very strong. A classic example of the latter is "Kodak," a completely made up word. I cannot sell "Kodak Brand Silverware" even though nobody would thnk it was made by the camera people. Why? Becasue George Eastman made up Kodak and they have a very strong mark.
While you are getting "clued up," remember that context is essential in examining genericness. I doubt you have ever referred to a piece of non-adobe software as "the illustrator software." It's not grammatically correct and worse, it would make a person sound like a doofus.
So, no, the situation you describe where layout people for the New Yorker live in fear of accidently referring to a cartoonist as, *choke*, an ILLUSTRATOR and being sued into oblivion cannot happen. OTOH, I'd like to see a fish animation program called "Gillistrator." That would be cool.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
It would depend on the application. If you made a word processor and called it that, then no.
How the fuck does KIllustrator infringe on the Illustrator trademark?
Somebody setup a Paypal account. Because I want to donate a $100 to this guy's legal defense fund. And Adobe can kiss my ass. My department would not be buying anymore Adobe products. They are trying hard to make enemies with a large development community.
How the fuck does KIllustrator infringe on the Illustrator trademark?
Somebody setup a Paypal account. Because I want to donate a $100 to this guy's legal defense fund. And Adobe can kiss my ass. My department would not be buying anymore Adobe products. They are trying hard to make enemies with a large development community.
Adobe has however managed to piss me off royally. They will get a pissy letter from me. I will be sending one in tonight!
You Adobe fuckers! You are going to hear from me alright. Hey what was the name of the comany that mails dog shit to the address you give them?
How the fuck does KIllustrator infringe on the Illustrator trademark?
Somebody setup a Paypal account. Because I want to donate a $100 to this guy's legal defense fund. And Adobe can kiss my ass. My department would not be buying anymore Adobe products. They are trying hard to make enemies with a large development community.
Okay okay, calm down. No dont go sending them dog shit. Just a polite note saying that you do not approve of the way they are handling this. I know I know there is a company that will mail them dog shit for a small amount of money, but dont do it. Its just mean. Adobe Systems Incorporated 345 Park Avenue San Jose, California 95110-2704 USA
What a great idea! I wonder why nobody has thought about doing something like that before?
Step 1: Sign the first cease-and-desist, and haggle with the opposing party over legal fees.
Step [2..n]: Send a nice little letter to the next "n" law firms pointing out that you already have signed a cease-and-desist letter, enclose a photocopy and end the letter by saying "Tough shit. No money in it for you this time".
Yes, that's indeed the way it works. You have to sign the first cease-and-desist (if you are in violation) but the next "n" lawyers won't see a separate cease-and-desist and certainly no money.
-Martin
SoftMaker Office for Windows|Linux|Android
hmmm well in that case lets all hate them then - cant make money out of a business can you now ? (geez Redhat and SUN must be enemy number one then ?)
:0 )
Note to World - Not everyone thinks linux is the second coming (i know its scary but its true i promise
Adobe are just trying to protect their trademarks in most cases - in this case i suspect they have no idea who these "lawyers" are - i suspect they are ambulance chasers
"Sanity is an illusion of the diseased mind"
They havent actually served papers - only sent a threat letter - if the product DOES NOT infringe on copyright (and as the author works for a University he should be able to find someone to give him a free legal opinion on it) then he has nothing to fear.
Actually i would do nothing until they receive official communication from Adobe's in house counsel - large companies DO NOT function like this - they mostly handle this stuff in house and would send a letter first BEFORE paying a lawyer to do this.
Dont pay them a cent - the wording of this letter looks odd - they have no legal grounding to demand destruction of the package unless they provide proof of copyright infringement in actual code - they can not ask for lists of users - this is protected information under trade practices law - in fact all they could do would be ask them to stop using the name or change the name to avoid further action.
A reputable law firm would also NEVER start our asking for money for costs in first letter - this would not be done as it smacks of confronation and i could see it making the average company angry from the start out.
These guys are trolls looking for some easy cash - DONT pay them a cent - get your Legal Advisor (and i am sure you have or know one or can find one) to contact Adobe or Adobe GMBH directly.
Adobe Systems GmbH
Ohmstraße 1
D-85716
Unterschleißheim
Deutschland
Tel: +49 89 31 70 50
Fax: +49 89 31 70 57 05
Now can we all stop working ourselves into a lather here OK
"Sanity is an illusion of the diseased mind"
He cant just say its a parody he has to prove it and i suspect he cant as i suspect this product works an awful lot like illustrator as i also suspect it was reverse engineered from it - therefore he has no legs for a parody claim.
"Sanity is an illusion of the diseased mind"
IMHO if you think microsoft is scared by open source software then you have gone open source in the head - they could not really give a shit about it - their power is in the corporate desktop marketplace and large environments - they are entrenched and as someone who works in them i can tell you they will NEVER EVER become linux users in the main - sure they use it for Web Serving, Datanases, SAA Pooling and other apps but NEVER on a desktop - its not stable or strong enough for the average half wit (pity as i kinda like it a lot)
"Sanity is an illusion of the diseased mind"
yup creative intelligent and well reasoned comment from the smart zone
you so l337 you scare me
"Sanity is an illusion of the diseased mind"
You know i am forced to agree somewhat but this does not mean microsoft as a company are 'rather' that they see some business opportunity in it. The problem that i see (and the thing that saddens me the most) is that the OSS movement is constantly being riven apart by holy wars and flame battles over the smallest issue. Linux has an incredible future as an OS - it can change many things but that does not mean that MS has to die and that bll gates is satan - get over this hurdle and we can change the world - if only we stop worrying about the competition.
This isnt a jihad its an OS
"Sanity is an illusion of the diseased mind"
Ok then explain the following
Corel Linux
Redhat
VmWare
SUN
they all make money off of GPL licenced software (and some of them even make a profit)
This is a redundant argument and would not last 10 minutes in a law court - just because you dont make money DOES NOT mean you can ignore copyright, trademark, fair use and other laws (laws you know them - thought some of you think they dont apply)
This discussion has gone on long enough dont you think ?
"Sanity is an illusion of the diseased mind"
Which doesn't apply in this case so there fore is a redundant comment
"Sanity is an illusion of the diseased mind"
They knew it and they wanted it - what better way to get people to notice your product and use it - you can bet that their installed base just went up by at least a factor of 10 yesterday - this is a setup as they KNEW the name would get them this sort of shit.
"Sanity is an illusion of the diseased mind"
Legally this is incitement to commit a federal offence under US law - not to mention fucking stupid - this is a community for comment not a hax0r group - encouraging people to mailbomb companies is not only stupid its irresponsible and donwright moronic. Constructive comment is one thing - this is another
/. with hacked or mailbombed - if that were to become the case then say goodbye to this forum folks.
I for one dont want people to equite
"Sanity is an illusion of the diseased mind"
What if they complied to the terms of the cease and desist, but didn't pay the money? Wouldn't the lawyers be left with nothing to sue over?
I can't post as an anonymous coward to say this: that is the FUNNIEST thing I have read on Slashdot in a month.
Trolls make great pets. Adopt one today!
well, I'm already in a kind of defacto boycott as it is. i don't run windows anymore so when i need to write a webpage i use vi not pagemaker or whatever its called and when i need to read pdfs i use ghostscript and finally when i feel a need to express myself in purty pictures i use the GIMP...oh and Killustrator. so basically all thats left to me is belittlement. hey if nothing else perhaps we'll see a surge in development for programs like the GIMP
-
to all concerned:
/. posts a story about our products and activities?
apparently we just pissed off a few million Open Source users and developers. Expect to be belittled repeatedly much in the same way MS is.
To The CEO: Do you want your borg apparatus on the left or right side of your head whenever
-
Just stall them to Jan 2nd 2002, /. can post a reminder and all us Eurpoeans will send them one of our brand new 1 cent pieces. They ain't going to accept pennies from the US, UK, Ireland etc. but they gotta accept Euros. So what do we need again? 200,000 readers at 1c .... hmmmmm this isn't into the hof yet so I guess we better come up with another idea :-(
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
and that was a link to the US trademark people. this case is in germany and therefore is not subject to american laws, but their own.
(although one might also think that yahoo would not be subject to french laws, or norwegian teens not subjetc to american laws...)
dave
An Open Source Project is, for all practical means, a Charity. Not a (spit) "business" ! Don't mess with a charity! Go take your stinking trademarks and die somewhere without spreading any more noise or odour !
'nuff said.
f.
These guys didn't do their homework, did they?
2nor am I sure that Adobe doesn't have a trademark on "Illustrator" by itself." Actually, they have both. Work Mark: Illustrator Serial no. 74731075: G&S: computer software for use in graphic design, desktop publishing, electronic publishing, printing, artistic and technical drawing, creating fonts and typefaces, and special graphical and textual effects; computer software containing clip art, and typefaces; and users' manuals and instructional books sold as a unit therewith. FIRST USE: 19861215. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19861215 Work Mark: Abode Illustrator Serial Number Registration Number: 1479408 G&S: COMPUTER PROGRAMS. FIRST USE: 19861215. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19861215 G&S: MANUALS FOR USE WITH COMPUTER PROGRAMS. FIRST USE: 19861215. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19861215 Or check tess.uspto.gov
"A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, ybt bss abj. Tb bhgfvqr. Syl n xvgr.
Everybody's going to jump on board with the Linux side of things here, but let's look at the facts.
Adobe owns the Illustrator name. It's not "Adobe Illustrator", it's "Illustrator". It's been around for ages and while not the best product in my eyes it certainly is better at this point that the K-version.
Regardless of platforms or competing or profits, Adobe owns the name. It's not a matter of "huzzah huzzah intellectual property" or anything. Names have been trademarked and defended for years. You don't see people cleaning the window with "Kwindex" or wiping their noses with "Gnokleenex" do you? NO!, because the base name is owned by a company.
As for the lawyers demanding to be paid, they should go fuck themselves. If the author's willing to change the name, he has already made the correct choice. Now, the lawyers have to do the right thing in turn and just leave it be.
Obviously they won't. Somebody go set up a Paypal account or something, maybe the author could do that, and we could contribute a buck each if neccessary.
- Reality. MacOS X will run both Illustrator and KIllustrator. So even by your logic, yes they are direct competitors.*
- Philosophy. Even if they didn't run at all on the same platform, your attitude is precisely what Free software is trying to dethrone - that your choice of operating system or platform is limiting rather than empowering. If App Q isn't available for your platform, bug the developers, learn another OS, look for a substitute, etc. The bottom line is that if learning a new skill is all that stands between you and a task, you've got no reason to whine.
What Adobe did was right and proper. It sucks that this poor schmuck is getting nailed, but if he'd had half a brain he would have expected it. The best post from the last article said, in part,Amen.
*Granted, there are some technical troubles between Apple and Adobe, but you can bet those will be ironed out - Apple users are very important for Adobe. You could also say that the people using Illustrator are unlikely to have the technical chops to get KIllustrator running under X. First, that's only an education problem, and doesn't help your argument. Second, you can bet that better installers are coming for all of user-land Free software).
"We all say so, so it must be true!"
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
It's the GE Adobe apparently hiring the krautlawyers from redneck kraut southend bavaria.
One can send them email at rsw@isarpatent.com.
Maybe sending friendly emails to GE and US Adobe and tell the lawyers what jerks they are would help??
I think what the lawyers are up to is serious.They apparently are employed by GE Adobe and they are not willing to compromise. Normally, one would send a demand letter to change something and then, if changes are not done accordingly within an adequate time frame, the plaintiff can get a judge to sign a decree. The next step then is to fight it out in court. IANAL, so I don't know if they can carge up front.
I doubt that things are done properly in this case and the kraut lawyers are full of hot air.
Kay-Uwe needs to get himself a lawyer and get this sorted out and protection from this kind of bull. Of cause, that costs money.
There was talk about donating money. If you are serious about it, please send email to help-kay-uwe@mtbwr.net, if there is need, I can set something up with paypal and make it available for Kay-Uwe in GE.
PS: one can still see the website in Google's cache. I wonder if they would sue Google too?
This is a follow up to this post
I'm really losing respect for Adobe. As a frequent user of their products, I'd become accustomed to their much-cultivated image of good people. All of their printed materials convey a feeling of good will because they teach you how to use the software so damn well, and then they pull shit like this?? It's a good thing I'm also a fan of CorelDRAW.
"That explains the milk in the coconuts."
They also have a list of trademarks that have become generic.
The site referenced above is quite extensive. I suggest we all read it.
Here are some better names:
KDrawingNStuff
Killustration
Killustrating
Killustrate
The heise article says "die kIllustrator-Verpackungen vernichten" which means they want him to destroy the PACKAGING (or wrapping) not the PACKAGES in an rpm like sense. So they do not ask for the deletion of the source code or stuff like that just for the boxes or whatever the stuff might be shipped in (if at all - maybe they didn't even check wether there are packages at all).
Just my 0.02, MadEagle
...the day after all the currency changes to Euros.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Please, if you choose to mail them, there are many valid reasons why Adobe should have tried to resolve this matter in a more appropriate manner. But flames won't help anyone.
If you have a well-reasoned letter, send it to rsw@isarpatent.com or isar-patent@t-online.de
Walter
Well if you have the time to relearn a new software maybe, but if you're used to adobe's interface, you'll find combustion really.... weird.tried it didn't like it... guess it's a matter of taste.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
When the lawyers complain, he can say, 'keuros', euros, aren't they the same thing ?
See, that's what I'd like to know - how specifically they could do anything, without breaking the GPL in the process. Any ideas?
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
I'd say what corel needs is better marketing, and someone who can remember that Windows applications on wine are currently NOT a good bet for commerical systems. Wordperfect 8, based off of a unix version, is a nice application, reasonably lightweight and has enough features for me. Also, the cases are not directly related. Corel tries to make money off of software sales. As a consequence, their market share remains small, and they cannot compete with Word. If they were to go free and opensource, they would suddenly grab a huge market share. It won't happen, since they are out to make money and probably have the openmail problem of code spliced into their application, but it would work as far as satisfying people's basic needs.
To see what I mean, take a look at Abiword. That is an excellent example of a project giving people the features they use first, and if there is demand later more can be added. For a million people who pay for Office directly or indirectly, Abiword can do the job. For libraries or other cost sensitive environments where only the basics are needed, it is perfect.
I grant Illustrator is a different case, since most people who actually pay for it are graphics professionals who need lots of features, but don't underestimate the power of open source. It can surprise you. Also, the mere fact of a free license is a major feature, and major starting point, for open source software. Microsoft is finding that there is a certain segment of the market that they cannot possibly reach, since free tools are doing the job well enough. That's why they're worried. Apache is a good example - it doesn't have incredibly fast serving rates, but it is robust and gets the job done well. Adobe will be harder to match, because of the specialized nature of their software and the generally very high quality of their work, but as long as there are crazy geeks writing free code the world will continue to be amazed.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
"I think for the GPL to take effect the person releasing a piece of software under it, would need to have the right to do so. E.g. if I were to somehow obtain the source for Adobe Illustrator and "release" it under GPL, nobody would actually gain the right to modify the code, as it was never legal for me to grant that right. "
Obviously correct. But not having written the code for Illustrator, you would have no rightful claim to it. In this case, we are talking about the author of KIllustrator. He might not have a right to the name, but since until now no one said anything to him, he certainly had a right to release his own work. Maybe the name wasn't a good idea, but the work itself he could release. He had full copyright on that at the time.
"So while the demands of these lawyers seem ludicrous they'd probably argue that it was never lawful to release the software in the first place."
I don't see how. Release it under that name, certainly. But the software itself isn't what they have a right to complain about, unless it violated patents or something like that. Unless I'm misunderstanding this, their problem is with trademark violation. Once that is gone, they shouldn't have any further complaint to make unless the name reappears. The SOFTWARE itself shouldn't bother them. (Well, it might bother them, but they shouldn't be allowed to kill it completely. Just rename it.)
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Calm down. A flame war won't help anyone. Your basic point is correct. I should have absorbed his point more thoroughly. (Posting close to midnight probably isn't the best thing to do.) Legally, you are correct, and I concede the point. However, from a broader point of view than the law, this is going to make Adobe look very bad in a lot of markets outside of Germany, whatever German law's traditions are. In the US and a lot of other places where this practice is not common, Adobe will come off looking like a bully. So, if the lawyers had considered the PR concerns of their employer, they should have controlled themselves, contacted Adobe to ask what moves they thought best to take in a potentially delicate situation, and see if Adobe wanted to volunteer to get their name ridiculed by a couple thousand very vocal critics across the world. (Assuming the lawyers had that much forsight - from what we are shown here I rather doubt it.) So from a legal standpoint, you are correct, and I should have noticed it, but from a broader viewpoint something like this should still be Adobe's bill. It would cost them a lot less than the ill will of the open source community, many of whom would be the type of high powered end users Adobe's products appeal to. If you check out the other posts as well, you will have seen some calls to boycott. If I recall, at Adobe's software prices, it would take about five people not buying Photoshop, or a few more than that not buying Illustrator, for this to become a bad financial decision on their part. Since Adobe is all about making money, they might want to give this a little more thought.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
"The lawyers required that the University sign the cease and desist letter"
OK, this makes perfect sense. Adobe has a right to defend their trademark. To this point, I have no problem understanding them, or agreeing with them.
"destroy the kIllustrator-package"
This almost certainly comes from a background of commercial software, where one person controls the source. What do they mean by destroy? Here are three possibilities I can think of off the top of my head:
1) KIllustrator is not distributed by the University or author under that name. This is reasonable, if this is what they mean, but I don't think it is the most probable interpertation.
2) All copies of the software in the hands of the challenged parties are destroyed. Harsh, but also possible. In fact, likely.
3) Wipe the software from the face of the earth. Absolutely impossible. Under the GPL license, people can create derivative works from versions already existing, unless I have misunderstood the GPL. Even the authors themselves do not have the power to retract that freedom, once the code is licensed under GPL. Even if Adobe were to acquire copyright to the codebase, it wouldn't stop the versions already existing from forking into new projects. Which they almost certainly will, under a name Adobe can do nothing about.
(Incidently, those of you who worry about the fact that forking is allowe to occur in open source software, this is an ideal case illustrating why the risks are worth it.)
"name every KIllustrator user"
Again, absolutely impossible. Every developer who as used the code, and every end user? I'm quite sure no one has the faintest idea who all those people are. Someone needs to explain the concept of anonymous downloads. Also, the software is given away free, under GPL. No one has any right to tell people to stop using it. DISTRIBUTING it under that name, yes, but how can using it be an act of trademark violation? Why do they even care? Can someone who knows more about law please tell me why they are interested? (Not rhetorical - I'd really like to know.)
"and disclose the profit they made from it."
Uh - if you count development time and computer equipment, that's probably a fairly large negative number. Anyway, I doubt it can be calculated except on the presumption that there was revenue from somewhere. What else would lawyers mean? (Again not a rhetorical question.) If that is what they mean these guys have absolutely no clue what or who they are dealing with.
"Finally the lawyers sent a bill for 4686 DM (German Marks, approximately 2000 dollars) not counting value added tax."
I don't understand why this isn't Adobe's bill. If the legal system is set up such that lawyers only make money from stuff like this, it's no wonder we have frivilous lawsuits all over the place. This should be a routine part of their paid job for Adobe, if it's Adobe who wants this action taken. If it's ment to be a warning to others, they need to calm down and consider the possible consequences of this "warning" - namely a buch of open source coders determined to write software which will free them from having to pay money to a company who uses tatics like this as SOP. KIllustrator, even if they kill it, is not the only fish in this ocean. Sodipodi and Sketch come readily to mind. They may not be Illustrator yet, but the concept of "good enough" is not to be underestimated.
"Should the University not sign, the lawyers will sue for a million DM (approximately 400 thousand dollars)."
Please tell me that they would have to show this amount of damage has been done. Considering the attitude the courts displayed when Microsoft held up KOffice as competition, I would think 400,000 in damage is going to be just a bit tough to justify. Of course, I may be overestimating the legal system.
"Kai-Uwe Sattler is happy to change the name, but doesn't want to pay this bill. When he suggested changing the name, the lawyers rejected his proposal saying "Do you know any lawyer who works for nothing?" The lawyers insist on payment."
To nit-pick, I believe sometimes lawyers actually will take a case without pay. (It's rare, but I know someone who was helped in a difficult time in her life buy just such a kind soul.) Of couse that's beside the point, but I thought it worthwhile to call them on it - if they can nitpick, why can't we? Anyway the important part is that their only source of income is implied to be from this kind of thing, and not Adobe directly. Also, the attitude of the developer was not sounded out and apparently makes absolutely no difference. Brrrr.
"Sattler regrets that Adobe never contacted him before calling upon lawyers to ask him to change the name of his software."
I would very much like to know if this was Adobe's intention, or if this is some lawyers who just aren't on a leash. Right or not (and in the trademark matter I believe they have some justifible grounds) they are going to get a huge amount of bad press. They may be indifferent to the free software community at large, but this is a good way to inspire the competition of open source people. They may not be so indifferent if an open source Illustrator clone starts to eat away at market share.
What really worries me, however, is that this sets a precident for other action. Whatever Adobe's intent was, we need to be EXTREMELY careful from now on when naming open source products. If this action is effective, open source opponents *cough*Microsoft*cough* will adopt this as a standard technique. Time to get creative.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Israel doesn't negotiate with terrorists, and they have some darn good reasons.
Why should we?
Negotiate with terrorists, and you encourage terrorism.
Ordering someone to pay $2000 for naming a FREE (in both senses of the word, cost and liberty) software project, in a way that some company disapproves, with one's own funds is terrorism.
Just that in this case it uses lawyers rather than bombs.
(Spare me any arguments that Adobe could be in the right about their trademark, there is no need to immediately demand money, rather than doing a cease and desist letter. Give a warning before going for the kill.)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
There are a lot of laws in the US which state that if you are a defendent and lose that you have to pay for the court the hung you and the lawyers that manuvered the court to hang you.
They hang you and order you to pay for the rope to do it with.
You may be ordered to pay all of the following:
Profits
Losses of the other party (they do throw you a bone in that no one thing can be assessed against you twice by both of the above, e.g. I do something that the court feels takes X dollars from you and gives it to me, I only have to pay X, and not 2X.)
Punitive damages (punishment)
Court costs
The other side's lawyers
Oh, and you (almost always) have to pay your own lawyers even though you LOST. Usually only plaintiffs can hire lawyers on contingency.
Reminds me of the Communist countries which bill the family of an execution victim the cost of the bullet.
Sure adds insult to injury.
And I do believe the paying for an attack against you is mandated or orderable in countries other than the "land of the free".
(Disclaimer: I am a human being, not a lawyer).
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Adobe has a trademark on "Adobe Illustrator", not "Illustrator". The "infriging" name is "KIllustrator", not "KAdobe Illustrator" (which would be really bad). See the difference?
Confusingly similar is the claim being made. If Adobe has a trademark on "Adobe Illustrator" that might give them control over derivations therof, but that shouldn't give them power over derivations of parts of the trademark.
And it is REALLY VERY LOW OF THEM to ask for money and not allow the victim to settle for a name change and no payoff to them.
I am not a lawyer, nor am I sure that Adobe doesn't have a trademark on "Illustrator" by itself. I don't think they should (it is a word), and I sure think asking for monetary damages/fees is outrageous. That is thuggery.
If you infringe a trademark of mine (if I had any), I'd ask you to stop, and only consider going for blood if you refused, were being intentionally malicious, or made a killing off the name (and I wouldn't dig deeper than profits from the name). I couldn't imagine demanding payment for a non-malicious person and/or university who made no money off of it and who agreed to a name change. That is evil.
But in capitalism, evil rises to the top. Only the vicious survive it appears...
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Offer them 50% of the profits if they'll leave you alone!
Fight Spammers!
There's the problem right there. The lawyers aren't in it for the good of the company, or even the laws. They are totally in it for the money. A reasonable solution was offered, but because the lawyers are greedy bastards its probably going to become one of many other suits jamming taking up court time unnecessarily.
You're nothing; like me.
How could Adobe not know it was going on. That's rather hard to believe. I'm sure they've been getting hate mail up the arse on this one.
You're nothing; like me.
"The illustrator", Gilsoft, 1983. Perhaps Adobe need to change the name of their product?
>As for the Pioneers that sell the same things--perhaps they're just differently-named branches of the same company?
:-) What I meant to say was they were both in the same field of sales (ie: A couple of them sell computers, a couple eletronics goods, two of them are newpapers etc...). I'd venture a guess that some of the products they generate are similar enough to each other in a similar manner that Killustrator is similar to Adobe Illustrator (ie: Similar function, totally different implementation).
Well, to be truthful, my scan of the companies was quite limited.
Actually, the newspaper sites are very much similar in that regard. Both of them are newspapers, but the content of them is different. Just like Killustrator and Illustrator are Vector Drawing Programs, but the content (code) is totally different.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I'm bored, so I decided to do this:
Some "Pioneers":
www.pioneerelectronics.com
www.pioneer.com
www.dailypioneer.com
www.pioneerlocal.com
www.pios.com
www.pioneerfunds.com
www.pld.com
www.pioneertechnology.com
You'd be surprised how many of those companies are infringing on one another's trade marks, yet I hear of no $2000 bills being passed about. Some of them sell identical things.
Why? Oh, maybe because they aren't all called "Pioneer". They are called "Pioneer Technology", and "Pioneer USA", etc...
Adobe needs to get a grip before they get themselves in too deep with the lawyer's money.
Another fun few: Look up companies named "Shepherd", "ATI", and "Trident".
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I am beginning to Wonder(TM) what the Future(TM) holds when you can trademark a Word(TM) commonly used and defend that trademark. How long is it before people who don't have lawyers or the money to buy them have to start using numbers (package 347 is a great drawing program). And to those who made cases about using names that bear a resembalence to their closed source couterparts here are some of your favorite things listed side by side
Linux | Unix XFree86 | X386 KDE | CDE
and there are many SomethingFree86 or Free86 somethings that I don't remeber... but the point is this... indistinctive names morally should not be trademarked. Yes I do live in "Happy Linux Slashdot Land"(TM) but free speech is one of the things that I love about this country. I suppose I feel like getting modded redundant today.
Remove *your pants* to send me email.
THe Open Group would have to call it "X Microsoft Windows" for your senario to work, and they don't.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
First of all, I'd like to look over what they are asking them to do:
destroy the kIllustrator-package
Well, we all know that with respect to the GPL and the people who already possesses the code to KIllustrator, this is like asking the seas not to break.
name every KIllustrator user
And because of the distribution medium, we also know that there is probably no chance of fulfilling this requirement.
disclose the profit they made from it
And we all obviously know that no profit was made from this software. How much money did you pay for KIllustrator on your desktop? That's what I thought.
The *BOTTOM LINE* is that this man, no matter his position, was working for the good of every user that exists. He was creating and maintaining software for free, to be GIVEN AWAY. He wasn't looking for fame, or for fortune. And yet, I see so many people turn a cheek and say 'Oh, but Adobe's product is called Illustrator, so he should pay anyway.' JESUS H. CHRIST. If there weren't people out there like this good man working to produce great software for people who BELIEVE in what I hope all of the people reading this post do, then the open source movement wouldn't be. OK. Granted, he named his FREE software package similar to a commercial counterpart. Like it is the first time. NO, that isn't an excuse. However, I believe that:
a) Adobe could have handled this in a much nicer fashion. The profits off of the platforms that KIllustrator runs on that adobe COULD be making are exactly *ZERO*. I wish to embed this into people's minds, because it is important. Yes, they have a good reason to keep their options open with their trademark, but at this time, what KIllustrator could take from them is absolutely NOTHING. So why not keep it simple????
b) It's been discusses time and time again, but if you, yourself, use any free software, whether at home or at work, and you agree with adobe and it's lawyers on this, you need to start questioning yourself. All I'm trying to say is that good people and good hackers are the ones that work on projects such as these. Dr. Kai-Uwe Sattler is just the front man for these lawyers, but yet so many people that thrive on so much of the work that people like Dr. Kai-Uwe Sattler do, want to turn a cheek on his temporary misfortune in his case. I'm not even saying that this is the first time, because it's not. It happens all too often. He is one of the many GOOD PEOPLE, working in THEIR OWN TIME, for YOUR BENEFIT. For the BENEFIT OF ALL PEOPLE who wish to have the choice. So tell me, when did he become the enemy? I apologize for the rant, but I believe what was said must be said.
Revelations 0:0 - The beginning of the end.
This seems like very stupid tactics, if Adobe is doing this. I am not so sure that it is Adobe. German law allows (for lack of a better term) IP bounty hunters, who can have no relation to the owner of the trademark. (Or at least that is what I have heard) So this may be independant lawyers out to make money. I personally am emailing Adobe about this.
Central Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) Adobe Systems Incorporated Christoph Sahner csahner@adobe.com Tel: +49-89-31705-248 really I don't know why there's all this bs. It's Killustrator isn't it?
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
Paypal states you can send money from a paypal account to any email address... Presumably they simply email the address in question and suggest they sign up if they want to receive the cash.
Basically, there's nothing to stop you attempting to send cash to the dude if you want to help him.
--
Well, not really (this is the American trademark, not the German one, but it does at least show that Adobe has trademarked the word "illustrator" in the US): http://tess.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=q7 17af.2.11
There's a distinct possibility that the work he has done on KIllustrator belongs to his employer in the first place, not him. It depends on what kinds of agreements he signed when he was hired.
ok, like the subject says, I take back what I said the other day about adobe being right. There taking things way to fucking far. This really upsets me.
Change the name, carry on
... until the fucking blood sucking laywers get invoild. Adobe should have sent a cease-and-desist uging them to change the name before they take things futher. You know what would have happened ? The name would have changed, and everyone would have been happy, end of story.
I don't know about everyone else, but I am gonna start emailing adobe 4 times a day telling them what I think of there company and why I will not buy there products until they cut the crap. I don't think this is flying off the handle or anything. Its help out the K guys.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Of course I'm sure there is a counter example that carries the same amount of common sense as too why Dr. Kai-Uwe should be the target?
Something else more worrying, the article states they sued his employeer and not Dr. Kai-Uwe directly could this possible prompt employers to start having new emloyees sign agreements that they are not to work on Open source projects etc? Another bit of common sense, if I go and steal a car it's not my employeer that gets arrested, it's me, where does this logic come from in trademark law? I though law for the most part was meant to follow common sense.
Ah, bugger this thing smell a little anyway and I seriously wonder if the law firm hasn't just seen a chance to make an easy buck (unlikely I know but it's lawyers we're talking about), if so I don't think it's going to be so easy.
As for new name sugestions I quite like Kartist.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
As far as I've understood of the legal system in most countries,satires and parodies are considered "fair use" (if that's the term).
So: Make KIllu into a parody of A-Illu, mock them in the opening credits or something.
That should do the trick, shouldn't it?
I am of German heritage and I found the remark to be pretty funny...
B
Flamebait
Serious inquiries only.
Seeing as Adobe knows nothing about authorising these guys (supposedly) then they could sue these lawyer guys for damaging their reputation - I mean, a lot of us here have suddenly decided to hate Adobe all of a sudden!
All of a sudden? Adobe charges money for software, so therefore all /.ers must hate them. Don't you know the rules?
---------------------------
Pooty tweet
They are trying hard to make enemies with a large development community.
Well, since they care more about designers and content creators than they do about developers, go ahead and make your stupid little empty threats. You wouldn't even know what to do with Illustrator if it was put in front of you.
---------------------------
Pooty tweet
Sorry, I forgot to put in the tags
---------------------------
Pooty tweet
Oh yeah I forgot this is not taking place in the US is it. I guess in Germany they don't have to follow any due process? In anycase hopefully someone has the latest source code so the current state is saved? Then the stuff can get renamed, put on a server elsewhere, the US(at least lawyers have to follow some due process here, say what you will), want Mine? I could probably let you use it for the time being?
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
IANAL, but I thought you didn't need to register a trademark for it to be yours. Just making it publicly known is sufficient. And that [tm] is different from (R).
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Dunno, I thought I had it from Mark Twain, but I heard it was older than that.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
If you don't issue any warning and come down on anybody who "infringes" like a ton of bricks, the number of repeat offenders is likely to be low.
I don't necessarily AGREE that this is anykind of infringement, but I can see how that might be their strategy.
This strategy also reduces competition, in that anyone who does infringe, or might infringe, or is afraid they might infringe, on an Adobe trademark (or who is paranoid or just cautious) will get scared and won't release their product.
So, anyone think that Adobe does, or might someday, trademark the concept of vector graphics and/or teh concept of vector graphics drawing software and/or the name of any vector graphics software or sub-component or feature of any vector graphics software and/or the "look and feel" of any vector graphics software or the above regarding any other aspect of any other Adobe product... etc. etc. etc.
Gawd, I sure hope that's not their strategy.
rsw@isarpatent.com seems to be the appropriate point of contact. Let them know that they're irritating a hornet's nest.
-John
Let's invoice the law firm for the Slashdot article... say one DM for every reader? Their actions forced us to raise media attention. When they pay up, donate it to the KDE project...
-John
Wonder where I can get a free PDF reader for Windows on my machine at work that isn't an Adobe product?
If it can go wrong it wnetscape: Segmentation Fault, Core dumped
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/contact.html
--Mike
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Hi, I work for Kleenix corporation and I noticed you did not have a license to use the word "Kleenix".
...., oh I mean defend my clients interests is what I want.
Since the law says that using the word kleenix is the same as stealing it, we therefor want money that was so called lost by your post. Besides this will make my resume look
http://saveie6.com/
Oh, you complain that VAT is unfair, but excuse me: I think taxes on gasoline are unfair (they are calles "accijns" in my language and I have no clue what it is in english). I have to pay them anyway! If you don't want taxes, abolish governement and see how well that goes.
Besides, did you ever shop in the US? I did. All the prices are shown without taxes, and thus you get your "surprise" (Sales Tax etc...) when paying. Honestly, I prefer the european system: take the tax for granted and don't even notice it anymore.
To stay on topic a bit at least: I think that even the name "KIllustrator" should be kept. I mean, next time I refer to my uncle as an illustrator (which is his job) I have to fear for a letter from Adobe's Lawyers. It's a word, nothing more nothing less.
Okay, the author agrees to change the name, that is very obedient of him, I repect that, but the "fine" is outrageous. Sounds like extortion to me: their are friendlier way to communicate.
As for concerning the lawyers in Germany (I work for a german bank, heard the following from native germans), it seems that Germany has a an enourmous amount of lawyers because the laws are so complex, that nobody really understands them anymore. This is especially true for tax-law, but it could be very well that it is worse in IP-law.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
No problem! Lemme see here...
Ok, here's my signature. Here's a CD-ROM with the only copy we have, honest! All users, lets see... how about every Open Source Fan that Adobe just lost as a customer? That should cover it. And profit? We, uh... only made twenty bucks. I swear. Here it is!
*cough* Suckers! *cough*
Anyone else get the feeling these are rouge IP lawyers acting without prior approval from Adobe, nor with any clue as to what Open-Source/Free Software is???
I'd say these are IP lawyers that Adobe licensed to enforce their IP in Germany. The lawyers use it as a cash-cow, going around extorting money from any hapless programmer who gets too close. I'd guess not a cent makes it's way back to Adobe. I bet Adobe doesn't even know this is happening.
The worst part is demanding the destruction of KIllustrator, talk about stomping over other peoples IP rights! I was in favour of paying the fine, changing the name, and moving on, but not now. We shouldn't be forced to destroy Killi (R), we need to fight this.
So, how can we politely contact someone important at Adobe and get them to make the lawyers see sense? A case for Bruce Perens, perhaps, to put on his HP hat and go door-knocking?
Failing that, we're going to need a fighting fund. I'm good for a $100.
Remember when Samba nearly nearly ran into this problem? It has happened before, and will happen again.
Expect to see more things like this when the Hauge Convention requires all paricipating countries to uphold laws like this worldwide.
It would be very ironic if Adobe actually had nothing to do with this, and instead pounced on the law firm for acting as an unauthorized representative...
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
"This article on heise-online reveals some more information on the K-Illustrator(TM) dispute. If my understanding of the German article is correct, the lawyer firm of Reinhard Skuhra Weise & Partner has issued a cease and desist letter to the University of Magdeburg, employer of K-Illustrator(TM)'s author, Dr Kai-Uwe Sattler. The cease-and-desist letter complains that k-Illustrator(TM)'s advertising damages Adobe(R)'s brand-name and damages the reputation of Adobe(R)'s product. The lawyers required that the University sign the cease and desist letter, destroy the k-Illustrator(TM)-package, name every K-Illustrator(TM) user, and disclose the profit they made from it. Finally the lawyers sent a bill for 4686 DM (German Marks, approximately 2000 dollars) not counting value added tax. Should the University not sign, the lawyers will sue for a million DM (approximately 400 thousand dollars) . Kai-Uwe Sattler is happy to change the name, but doesn't want to pay this bill. When he suggested changing the name, the lawyers rejected his proposal saying "Do you know any lawyer who works for nothing?" The lawyers insist on payment. Sattler regrets that Adobe(R) never contacted him before calling upon lawyers to ask him to change the name of his software. Udo Skuhra, who works at the lawyers' firm, refused to talk to heise-online about the cease-and-desist letter, and refused to state whether Adobe(R) asked his law-firm to issue it."
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
What X Windows trademark? It isn't called X Windows. It's either just plain X or the X Window System.
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
is the part about destroying the package and identifying the users. It would be good if someone could post the actual demand letter. Renaming the program is one thing, but they want the package to totally stop existing and they want to be able to go after individual users?! That's worth going to court over.
If I remember my Business Law in Canada course they shoved down my throat while I was taking data communications, the only thing you automatically get is (c) copyright. Everything else has to be registered. Now if someone else tries to register something, and you can prove that you had it first, you can retroactively register ie. say that they cant register because it was your first and your registering now. But I also ANAL... I do remember asking the diff between TM and R and my teacher told me it's just preference, whichever you want to put...
After all, it sounds suspiciously like Crayola brand Crayons.
xerox, in fact, did have a team of lawyers to defend its name. however, didn't work. the Hormel example is a better one.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Actually, Adobe might have a case to make against them even if they're working on retainer for Adobe. Their conduct strikes me as being negligent, and Adobe could well sue for negligence.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Paul Simon is correct. See here.
As for the term's genericity: I'm not sure. I think Adobe's case is good, merely that the legal action taken was too extreme for the situation. I don't think the Linux market is the actual target market; rather I would think of the target market as being microcomputer drawing programs.
I agree about the lameness of the lawyers though. :)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
IANAL but judging by the tactics employed the lawyers know they haven't really got a case and are going for a quick FUD assault to score a few grand. So unless we all woke up in the USA this morning then he should tell the lawyers to shove it up their arse.
If she had known you could get money for name infringement, she would've gone after the developers of BitchX a long time ago.
Yes, my girlfriend is a BitchX
Killlawyers. When does that one go up on Freshmeat?
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
If I was Dr Sattler, I'd get in contact with the police. What these lawyers are doing is, in effect, demanding money with menaces, which may well be a crime in Germany. It'd be nice to see these pond scum doing time, or even heavily fined.
Disclaimer: IANAL, and especially IANA German L.
Dr. Kai-Uwe Sattler, don't let them abuse you. Changing the name is all you need to do. Don't pay anything.
Adobe, duh!!! This is costing you in bad publicity far, far more than you could ever possibly gain.
To Adobe's marketing manager: I could send letters to all the members of Adobe's board of directors, pointing out your obvious lack of understanding. I think I could make a good case that I should have your job, since I am smart enough to keep Adobe away from financial violence when asking nicely would do the job.
Bush's education improvements were
-
Okay, I did MY part. Did you do yours???
Someone posted the e-mail address of the CEO of Adobe to the Slashdot discussion. So, I sent him the message below. Notice that the attachment I sent was in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. I thought that was a nice touch. Maybe the fact that I am a licensed user of Acrobat will carry some weight.
___________
Subject: Discussion about Adobe on Slashdot
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 20:37:09 -0700
From: Michael Jennings
To: Bruce Chizen
bchizen at adobe.com
Bruce Chizen
CEO, Adobe
Mr. Chizen,
You maybe interested in my opinion below about Adobe's attacking of a man in Germany. I posted it to Slashdot,
http://slashdot.org/
I'm serious about applying for the marketing manager position at Adobe. I wrote an article, "Qualities of Excellence
in Marketing Management" which is attached.
Do you realize that Slashdot has hundreds of thousands of readers, most of whom are very knowledgeable about
computers? You are in a very, very expensive fight. Is that what you want?
Do you see that this fight may negatively affect your ability to hire knowledgeable programmers, now and in the future?
Michael Jennings
_________________
Dr. Kai-Uwe Sattler, don't let them abuse you. (Score:2) by Futurepower(tm)
(MichaelJennings at mailandnews dot com) on Tuesday July 03, @07:59PM PDT (#176)
(User #228467 Info)
Dr. Kai-Uwe Sattler, don't let them abuse you. Changing the name is all you need to do. Don't pay anything.
Adobe, duh!!! This is costing you in bad publicity far, far more than you could ever possibly gain.
To Adobe's marketing manager: I could send letters to all the members of Adobe's board of directors, pointing out your
obvious lack of understanding. I think I could make a good case that I should have your job, since I am smart enough to
keep Adobe away from financial violence when asking nicely would accomplish the purpose.
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Name: markt01e.pdf
Type: Acrobat (application/pdf)
Encoding: base64
Bush's education improvements were
Doesn't this make sense: In addition to the requirement that nobody else be using the trademark you want to use (or something similar), your trademark must also be distinctive. That means it cannot be so generic that it just describes the product instead of the source of it. For example, if you sell timber, you cannot trademark the word "wood" or "timber," but you could trademark "wood-o-rama" or "timbermania." From http://www.soyouwanna.com/site/syws/trademark/trad emarkFULL.html
*pout*
Health is simply dying at the slowest rate possible.
Well, obviously I don't know much about technology issues either then, because I don't see how the platform disparity magically makes KIllustrator a non-competitor.
If I'm a graphic designer, then I want to avail myself of a set of tools that helps me get my job done. If someone tells me there are programs called KIllustrator and the GIMP that work as well as their Adobe equivalents and cost considerably less, then I will no doubt be strongly tempted to quit shelling out hundreds of dollars to Adobe. Sounds to me like KIllustrator constitutes competition, and threatening competition at that.
The argument that the platform difference allays the competition is particularly weak in the instance of graphic design software. Some people have the preconception that graphic designers and artists are "Mac people," but in my experience they are more interested in the tools that best help them get the job done. In modern graphic design, file format compatability makes platforms largely irrelevant (aside from OS learning curves). There are many other business spaces and user types in which platform differences are much more significant (e.g., software engineering; Microsoft wouldn't perceive some Unix IDE as a competitor to Visual Studio).
Time to create a letter, with template? 2K? Man, THAT is some bill rate....
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
To the AC that posted "If Adobe Doesn't Straighten Up Their Act": Your post is very amusing, but your logic is a little shakey in two areas:
1) We don't know if Adobe is even behind this. The law firm won't even say whether they are working for Adobe. It may be that Adobe is going "KIllustrator, what's that?" while some German law firm is trying to scare some money for itself from some poor person at a university. The insistence on paying up rather than removing the infringing name, and the requirement to name all users seems fishy to me.
2) Since when is Adobe going to care about you burning "pirated" copies of their software? As far as they are concerned, you are not a customer to begin with.
To Adobe: If you are behind this, don't you have better things to do? Like finish your OS X ports before your competitors so you don't loose your precious marketshare? I have valid licenses for both the Windows and the Mac versions of Photoshop. I'm only upgrading to Carbon or Cocoa.
Mothra: 1961-2001 Her heart can reach!
Am I surprised? No. I think i'll be more surprised if the major media outlets actually take notice of this obvious case of David vs. Goliath (and goliath wins...). ,'extreme right wing wacko' as the media puts it, news sources. But compare us to the 200+ million people in our country, and the billions in the world. Are out voices heard over the noise that is 'mainstream'? Not any more... its over folks..
It appears the day I've always feared has arrived. Big corporations steamroll over anybody who dares stand in their way, just like a protester in Tianemen (sp?) square. Does anybody notice? No. Maybe a couple thousand of us who bother to read the alternative
"Pussy: You spend 9 months trying to get out of it, and the rest of your life trying to get back in..."
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
Comply with the rest of the letter. But when it comes to money tell them to piss up a rope. Point out that there is no money to sue for and they will probably just go away.
StoneWolf
I wonder if this is what's happened here? If so, I have to tone down my criticism of Adobe in the previous Slashdot about this issue because, well, lawyers are lawyers, and what they don't know about technology issues (like enough to know that a program that cannot run on the same platform as another is clearly not a rival, and moreso, that a client might just have chosen a generic name for their product that could reasonably be said to apply to all the products aimed at the same application) they make up in determination and legal maneuvering.
That's not to say it's good that it's happened: Absolutely it is not. Nor is it to say that Adobe are blameless - in my view, they need to keep a leash on groups that operate in their name. But it does at least explain why Adobe have engaged in an activity so likely to alienate potential customers as apparent high-handed corporate bullying of a clear underdog.
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I strongly urge everyone to stop using PDF on their websites, Ghostscript is cool.
--
Will the last company to abandon Linux please turn off the lights??!
There are a number of people out there seklling their services as "illustrators". They clearly pirated this job description from the Adobe program of the same name. Please report this piracy to Adobe at: http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/antipiracy/reportf orm.html
In the name of consistency, their lawyers should issue cease and desist letters to all of these people. Let's mount a campaign!
Adobe may well have a legal right to protect its trade mark.
However, the way that Adobe (a rich multinational firm) is acting should not only be of concern to the Free Software community.
It is of concern to the whole community; we should all be interested in protecting volunteer organizations that do a great deal of good with very little resources.
Are they acting reasonably? They seem to be acting in a heavy handed way that is not reasonable or sensitive to the situation.
Killustartor is free software developed by a group of volunteers. No one is making a profit from the project. Adobe knows this and should
be sensitive to it.
Open source projects are like charities. They are grassroots charities.
Imagine if some large food manufacturing firm did the same thing to volunteer organization that distributes food to the poor.
With this analogy in mind, what should be done?
1) Change the name of KIlustrator. It was silly to call it that in the first place.
2) Boycott Adobe products, so that next time a multinational firm has a dispute with a not for profit organization it will attempt to resolve
the dispute in a more sensitive way.
You DO happen to know that the author of kIllustrator IS german?
Since no one knows the identity of every user of Killustrator, the only way that the University of Magdeburg could identify the users and destroy every copy of Killustrator would be to take over the entire world, force their way into people's homes, search their computers, and destroy all copies of Killustrator -- all without cause or legal grounds. To you, as Germans, this probably sounds like a great idea. But this idea makes us non-Germans uneasy.
I think its time for the OpenSource community to be able to defend its projects from threats like this one.
/. their mailboxes.
When such imbecile suits are filed against a project the email addresses(info,support,etc...) should be posted with the article whether on slashdot or elsewhere and we should all
Of course, that's just one mean of defense and others should be thought about.
I think it's deeply embedded in the culture, and very ancient. The system of legal scolding is a lot like the shouting-down that American jaywalkers are so surprised to receive from other pedestrians in German cities. I got chewed out in Munich for crossing a completely empty street at midnight, by the only other person who was out. Seemed more like some weird residual Protestant exhortation than denunciation, but it still had a disturbing effect. Made me think about how deep the differences in cultural norms can be in superficially similar societies.
Looks like the legal system has enshrined this as a form of peer-pressure-for-profit.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
So what gives them the right to shit on a developer that codes in his free time and gives a great product for free? If it wasnt for competition, we wouldnt advance at all (ie AMD vs. Intel -- once the gig processor came out, Intel "all of a sudden" discovered how to do it too).
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Makes sense (not the law, your explanation). I had basically figured this was an independent firm, but this simply makes the rest fall in place. I don't know if you know (unless you're a lawyer, I doubt you will), but could he simply change the name, offer to pay a reasonable bill (IE the post above this one) and that would be it? Or can Adobe intercede and leash the lawyers? :-)
Of course, maybe they'll view that as being wimpy, but it's better than 200,000 angry Slashdotters. /Tangfan
A CD from iTunes: $10 A Song from iTunes: $0.99 Not paying a cent to Microsoft: Priceless
The tademark registered by Adobe is "Adobe Illustrator", NOT "Illustrator".
Also, there are MANY generic and other brands of corn flakes called (company) Corn Flakes.
Why? Because THAT is what it is! It seems to me to be a relatively recent phenomenon that corps are trying to use trademarks to gain outright ownership of generic (plain English) words. That was never the intent.
"Adobe Illustrator" is a non-generic term that specifically applies to their product. Obviously that deserves trademark protection. However, "Illustrator" is an English noun, used for many different purposes. And, I'd imagine that if you wanted to be really technical about it, I'm sure that you can find SEVERAL trademarked products with the word "Illustrator" in it that were filed many years before "Adobe Illustrator".
Simply, trademark law cannot grant ownership of a descriptive word just because it's in the name. Otherwise, lawsuits among and by Microsoft, Word Star, and Word Perfect would have been continual.
But then, this is the 21st Century, and who knows what the law is anymore, now that it's so complex and convoluted that an understanding of it is beyond the grasp of the citizens who are bound to obey it...
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Well, common sense is the most misnamed term in the language, as it's not very common...
IF KIllustrator infringes Adobe Illustrator (Adobe's trademark registration is not just "illustrator", it's the whole word "Adobe Illustrator) Then this software package is also im violation:
Microsoft Word (infringes Word Perfect)
I'd assume that Word is sold in Germany under that name.
So, some advice to would-be IP lecherous lawfirms: Go after Microsoft! You can't get rich by stealing money from those who have none (which is why your predecessors, the highwaymen didn't rob the poor, but the rich)
Recent success Corporations have had in claiming trademark ownership of plain language nouns and verbs is downright scary. Clear Channel communications, for example, is suing and threatening smaller competitors across the country for calling radio stations "KISS", which is a common, plain English VERB, just like illustrator.
And even worse, the Federal courts are letting them do it. In fact, one Federal court in CA even put a cease and desist order on Clear Channel (ordering them not to put a station called KISS in Bakersfield, where American General Media already had a station with that name), and they promply went out and defied that order the NEXT DAY... The same judge not only didnt hold CC in contempt, he reversed his own order!
Why is Clear Channel so vociferously fighting to own the name KISS? Simple, it's much easier and cheaper to automate hundreds of Top 40 pop (IE, the stations that play Britney Spears and the boy bands), to hundreds of different markets, if they all have the same name!
This should give you an idea how far our courts and government seem to be willing to sacrafice Constitutional liberty and freedom for the mere CONVIENIENCE of a massive corporation!
Trademarks, copyright, and patent law is in the Constitution, which places STRICT limits on their duration and applicibility. Which has been completely ignored by Congress and past Presidents who passed and signed into law the "DMCA" and the "Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act".
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
I've used Illustrator before, but will never again. I'm also going to start looking for better digital ink solutions other than Acrobat.
Companies need to learn that poor actions lead to poor sales...
Maybe someone who knows can tell us whether or not the law enabling this sort of abuse is a leftover Nazi law? They (Nazis) weren't much more than legally elected gangsters and extortionists -and this is sure penny ante freelance legal extortion
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
seems like the fish has been used too much on this one ;-P
according to the article:
anyway, IANAL either but it seems to me the best way to reduce the bill is to challenge the "Streitwert" because it has been set arbitrarily by the lawfirm. maybe adobe could talk to them in order to save face (remember, it's not based on normal billable hours like in the US) and set a lower value, with a lower bill.
or, like another poster mentioned, make payment but deliver it in coin (1Pf) and insist on a receipt.
This Like That - fun with words!
Some people really have nothing better to do with their lives...do they.
Damnit, Jim, I'm an anarchist, not a F@#$!^& doctor!
Port The Gimp over to the PC and Mac platform. Teach gready-ass corporate bastards that if you mess with the Open Source community, you will pay! Ask Bill and Steve (ala - Micro$hit). And take your punkass pdf reader with you! I use xPDF anyways and its way better for reading pdf's. I'm tired of companies trying to hide behind bullshit laws, politics, lobbyists, and anything else they think they can use to leverage aganst consumers. GO TO HELL ADOBE AND TAKE MICRO$HIT WITH YOU!
Isn't that just SO like a lawyer, to want to get paid for his work, i mean sheesh, what arrogance.
But seriously, you think Adobe would pitch in the 2k to get the lawyer to shut up and everyone would be happy.
Hi,
there is a law in Germany that enables every laywer (maybe even everyone, I'm not sure) to 'inform' you about a breach of law you comitted and charge you for this 'service'. There is a whole bunch of this type of 'service providers' that scan the real-estate ads for 'unlawful' descriptions and charge people for telling them what was wrong with the ad (I'm not making this up!) The whole thing got out of hand a couple of years ago and no one in the current or former legislation wanted to do something about this. Mostly because most of them are laywers themselves, I suspect.
Greetings from Germany
Running Apache on Linux. Web site was designed in (you guessed it) Adobe Go Live. Stupid lawyers, bad bad bad.
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
Uh....why? Will jackbooted Adobe thugs be coming around to those houses in the middle of the night?
I'm a bloodsucking fiend! Look at my outfit!
Perhaps this is obvious, but the e-mail address for the law firm is RSW@Isarpatent.com. :) Mine's going off it a couple minutes.
As stated with the Adobe contact info, be nice
Greg
There doesn't appear to be anyone even remotely qualified. Looks like they are mainly into the chemical/electrical/and physics industries.
How the heck did they catch the computer software thing? Can't seem to get a direct link to that page, but it's pretty simple to find...
Greg
It should be called "Kill US Trator"
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
Check the trademark search engine that the AC provided. I think he linked to the "Adobe Illustrator" trademark but there is also an "Illustrator" trademark that is also owned by Adobe.
Word Mark ILLUSTRATOR
Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: computer software for use in graphic design, desktop publishing, electronic publishing, printing, artistic and technical drawing, creating fonts and typefaces, and special graphical and textual effects; computer software containing clip art, and typefaces; and users' manuals and instructional books sold as a unit therewith.
FIRST USE: 19861215.
FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19861215
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Serial Number 74731075
Filing Date September 19, 1995
Published for Opposition February 18, 1997
Registration Number 2060488
Registration Date May 13, 1997
Owner (REGISTRANT) Adobe Systems Incorporated
CORPORATION CALIFORNIA 1585 Charleston Road
P.O. Box 7900 Mountain View CALIFORNIA 94039
lawyers who act on their own without needing to tell their clients. I would immediately move out of the U.S. if lawyers started to do that here. I hope to god our legal system never allows something like this.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
hit them where it hurts!
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
As I recall, in Germany, law firms can independently police certain laws and write "cease and desist letters"; Adobe need not have been involved in this. I believe they can also charge the recipient of those letters for their work.
However, it seems that 4684DM far exceeds their expenses. The law firm seems to use the threat of sueing to achieve compliance in order to recover excessive legal fees for themselves. If I were Sattler, I would write a letter stating that I disagree with their interpretation of trademark law and admit no wrongdoing, but that I am changing the name immediately to avoid further legal harrassment by their lawyers. Then I would separately ask the law firm for an itemized bill for their labor (that's what the money is for, so one can expect a bill). I'd check the work and rates with another lawyer or a consumer agency and pay only what's fair and reasonable (I suspect no more than 100-200DM).
I think if this went to court, the law firm would have a hard time recovering more than reasonable costs for writing the letter. I think any case about the trademark would also be hard to make: "killustrator" is a non-trivial variation on a generic term, it doesn't seem "confusingly similar" to "Adobe Illustrator", and furthermore "killustrator" is not a product that is for sale and therefore may not even infringe. Again, talking to a lawyer should help here, since trademarks like "Adobe Illustrator" may be protected differently in Germany.
I empathize with the attorneys and understand that they do need to get paid for their time. I lay the blame for this at Adobe's feet, however, for calling in a surgeon before simply rinsing the wound and applying a band-aid.
Lesson: Try communicating with the offending party directly before calling in the expensive legal help.
-Coach-
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
The simplest answer is to do nothing.
Let the lawyers for Adobe continue to inflate their charges. IANAL, but I have been through something very similar. The advice I got was to do nothing unless I was formally served and legally required to answer.
In other words, force them to sue. Their client will probably realize it isn't worth the cost of litigating.
To protect a developer or company from future "abmahnung"-ers which charge 2000 euro, couldn't a lawyer take a small fee to send a cheap warning-letter, and thus protecting a product from any other independent law firms to bully them around?
Of course, the owner of the trademark might still sue the pants off them, but they might want to send out a friendlier request before going to court.
...um...like...a sig...
boycott adobe until this nonsense is dropped. in a time where rampant corporations wield power over individuals consumer choice is a powerful weapon.
AFAIK, Apple did sue Microsoft for copying their GUI, but the judge ruled that look and feel could not be copyrighted
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
Well, you just named my no:1 reason to stay in the middle of the political spectra. Fear all people who claim to be ***-wing...
Leftwing = Let the government control and harass you.
Rightwing = let the corporations control and harass you.
.............................................
I'm the one without a soul
---
The combined human population is enough to feed every living tiger for app. 28000 years.
Yup, that would make you somewhat a liberal, just like me. :-)
.............................................
I'm the one without a soul
---
The combined human population is enough to feed every living tiger for app. 28000 years.
Umm... The lawyers don't think they add value, it's the law. See, in the Europe, there's this stupid tax, VAT, that is paid to the country where you buy something, no matter what. (Althought I think at least some countries exempt medicines from the tax...) In Finland, it's most commonly 22% of the value of purchase. So, when I pay my ADSL bill, I pay the actual bill and the taxes, and every n months, the company I paid my ADSL bill to gives the tax amount to Finnish tax office. Nasty, but happens in Europe.
I am writing to warn you that you are attempt to protect the interests of Adobe corporation has and will cause you much adverse publicity. Whilst I respect your position, the name in question is a) artificial and b) is based upon what the product does vis-a-vis document illustration. I realise that you are not an English firm and can theerfore not be aware of the normal use of words in the English language. You would be able to sucessfully argue the case in court but only with significant costs. However, Killustrator only works on a platform for which Adobe does not provide any support (Linux/KDE).
I am not sure whether you know about the OpenSource and Free software movements. The creator of the program has made the program available, free of charge, to anyone who has access to the Internet and there is no restriction upon secondary distribution. The end result is that copies may be present anywhere from New-Zealand to Uzbekistan. The creator did not perform any other action than to leave the files in a place that is acessible by the public. The act of copying was performed by the users.
I would strongly suggest that you request only a change of name, rather than the destruction of the programme. Otherwise you will find that your company becomes a laughing-stock on the Internet. The Open-Source/Free-Software movement is extremely popular in Germany and Europe and you *will* lose clients.
I am writing to you in my private capacity in the hope that you will avoid putting the law on intellectual property in Germany and the EU into disrepute. Incidentally, I do not use this particular program as it is intended for working in an environment that I do not use.
Regards,
I'm starting to loose a lot of respect for Adobe. Last year, they sued Macromedia because Flash 5 had a "tabbed panel interface" that Adobe claims they made first. They wanted Macromedia to pay fines and stop the release of Flash 5. I'm supprised that Apple, or Xerox for that matter, doesn't sue for the invention of the graphical user interface. All of these companies now are naming their products with common words. I could make a lot of money if I started a company, developed a program called "Programmer" and sued everyone who used that word.
~The log of the limit is equal to the limit of the log.
Hey, these are "independent" lawyers right?
Seeing as Adobe knows nothing about authorising these guys (supposedly) then they could sue these lawyer guys for damaging their reputation - I mean, a lot of us here have suddenly decided to hate Adobe all of a sudden!
--
On a similar note, NPR just did a 2 day series on how major corporations are taking over the once indie Internet. Those sites that aren't being bought up are being sued off the Internet by the recording and movie industry scum, among others. Basically the gist was scum lawyers will control the Internet for corporations like they control the rest of America. Our beloved /. was the highlight of the 2nd series as the one thriving independent media outlet.
My take on what the story was trying to convey was that /. doesn't have a staff on payroll that it has to pay, as well as operations cost, that is out there trying to dig up news stories. They have us doing for them.
I think that is what they were meaning by independent.
The common English word "Illustrator" belongs to Adobe as a trademark the same way the common English word "Office" belongs to Microsoft as a trademark. I.e., only under very, very narrow and restrictive circumstances could they claim an infringement.
Case in point, I used many a year ago an Amiga app called Illustrator. I can't say how popular it was, and if the Amigans are still using a version of it, but it was, gee imagine, a program for creating illustrations. How shocking that one would call such a program Illustrator. It definitely predated Adobe's application, and it did a related thing. A thing that that English word commonly describes.
Adobe could only justifiably claim an infringement if the other product using the word Illustrator in its name were deliberately confusing customers by adopting a "confusingly similar" name. No one is going to confuse a Linux app named KIllustrator with a Mac/Windows app named Illustrator.
If your logic held, then Microsoft would be turning the thumbscrews on KOffice, which we *know* they'd love to do. But they aren't, because they'd be laughed out of Court. Much as Adobe would be laughed out of Court, at least here in the U.S. So, KIllustrator and other potential targets of shitty sheister German lawyer fuckheads should be headquartered in countries which, backward as they may be in some respects, still have a judicial branch which isn't *entirely* controlled by the trial lawyers' associations. (BTW, I for one am glad that GWB has said that he will not be employing the Bar Association to review his Court appointees, unlike his predecessors; that would be like the corrupt policing the corrupt.)
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Note that they did not demand the package (package as in project) to be destroyed, i.e. to delete all the source code or something. That's a translation error.
What they did demand is that all packaging material (those boxes you buy commercial software in) be destroyed. This is pretty obvious, as the infringing name is usually printed on those boxes. However it shows that those lawyers have no idea about what open source software is, because this software is not packaged. You just download it.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
Since this the software is licensed under the GPL, shouldn't it stay around even IF they put this guy away for not paying debt etc? Also, I didnt know adobe was german company, is the Dr. Also in germany? If not, How would the litigation work across international borders. Food for thought is good, but who's cooking?
Some people tell me I am sleeping my life away, I simply tell them I am living my dreams.
I think someone should sue adobe for ruining their reputation with this stupid behavior..
Hi,
I know it is out of topic but this is an interesting question.
The problemn is that the basic idea of the theories of communism where to increase to life quality of people, although real world experiences aren't exactly that. But the theory behind megacoorporation are making a lot of profit for a few people, and using all possible legal ways to do it (and perhaps illegal); so this IS a big difference.
Actually 150 world biggest coorporation makes more money that the (Brut interior product) that all nations in the world !!
So the capitalism is going to live for itself, letting the humanity behind, but sucking its bolld until death.
So, we are really in a very bad position...
Free Software is good for humanity, but threatend by coorporations, so we must do as much as we can to protect it and protect the freedom of the humanity from an ill system that is going to destroy it.
Recently, there was a story at segfault.org, which said essentialy the same. It's about how MS realized that all people using words like word, office or windows are infringing their patent. The story ends that free software movement quickly responds with new, although somewhat awkward, but copyright-free, words.
Maybe the lawyers of adobe were inspired here ??
And I _KNOW_ that there's a windows version of it, although it's a bit tricky to install. I had to use it once because, well, standard windows doesn't have a thing that reads postscript files.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
grep -i WORD /usr/dict/words
So for illustrator:
grep -i Illustrator /usr/dict/words
You better believe it finds something.
The trick here is that they really DID trademark "Adobe Illustrator". Interestingly, they actually own trademarks neither on "adobe" (which is a type of brick) or "illustrator" (which is a person who draws), but on "Adobe Corporation" (or similar) and "Adobe Illustrator".
Illustrator might not be as common a word as, say, "Office", but since it is a single, dictionary word (not a hybrid like PrintWriter, or somesuch), the word itself may be used in names, even of competing products (or, at least, it's true here in Canada).
A cute example is "Draw". If you send somebody a "Draw file", you're talking Corel Draw. Why hasn't Corel sued anybody over "Microsoft Draw" (I seem to recall such a product), or similar? Same reason.
I think I'll patent the dictionary-word trademark.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
For example, I cannot trademark either "Troll" or "shredder", but I could certainly trademark "The Troll Shredder", since it's more than one word. Not to mention it sounds like a handy product (although I can think of other words besides "shredder" I'd like to use).
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
So, let me get this straight...
An individual developing a piece of software in his free time for free distribution is encroaching on Adobe's naming system, but Jasc can sell a piece of software with the words paint! and shop! in the name for a profit!, and no one at adobe cares?
-Chris Canter
Finally the lawyers sent a bill for 4686 DM (German Marks, approximately 2000 dollars) not counting value added tax
Lawyers actually believe they add *value* by sending a threatening letter?
It wouldn't be that crazy.... M$ is scared by o.s.s., and many small attacks against universities supporting, in some way, that kind of projects is a good tactic (from their point of view).
No media coverage, nor attention.... This won't be the last attack against free software we'll see in next months: I expect to see some kind of "Holy Alliance" against open source software, first or later. Maybe a hidden one.
And a hidden alliance would produce that sort of staff we are talking about.
Anyway, i.m.h.o, illustrator is a common word. But, unfortunately, lawyers need (also) that kind of nasty actions to buy their new Porsche and Z8.
Hey guys, do you know how much does a Carrera 4 cost? That's an horrible amount of money and someone has to give them!
So, let's help those poor lawyers not to cut a poor figure with their colleagues who just bought a brand new car!!
- "Having a clean conscience is sign of bad memory"
That's all it is, from a M$ sock puppet. You should all go here and ask for custom butt-plugs for all the assholes at Adobe: http://www.adobe.com/support/feature.html If these parasites are successful more will follow just remember "when the hangman comes for you"!