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Adobe Responds to KIllustrator
j7953 writes: "German news service heise online reports that Adobe wants to settle the KIllustrator case. According to the article (here's Google's translation), they demand that KIllustrator gets a new name, but don't want to stop its distribution or development. They also promise that the author won't have to pay anything."
Somebody must have dropped you on your head as a child. The arguement you
Set that Adobe has rights to an English word shows you must have your thumb
Up your ass. There is absolutely no possible way that
US Law would ever protect a company who is trying to pillage and abuse
The english language. You need to realize that you and the US are not the
Bomb and get over it. You make me sick
Ah, but the REASON he objected was because the 7100s two sister projects, the 6100 and 8100, were code named Cold Fusion and Piltdown Man, one a bogus technology (for now), the other being a famous hoax. Then, when Carl Sagan found out, he sent his lawyers after Apple to get the code name changed. Apple did, and changed the code name for the 7100 from Carl Sagan to BHA, which he also gave a stink over and again had his lawyers make Apple change. Apple's final code name for the 7100?
LAW: Lawyers Are Wimps.
we are building a religion
a limited edition
we are now accepting callers
for these pendant key chains
Why don't they just call it the K'ustrator?
--Jim
Neither have I. However, due to the name, and having known the name Adobe Illustrator (though not having used it), I assumed that the two were very similar in function and form. This, to me, seems to be the very purpose behind trademark law, to prevent confusion.
You make a valid point, but I suspect many will draw an IMHO incorrect conclusion from it, namely that this justifies both the trademark and Adobe's extremely heavy-handed tactics in enforcing it (threatening, or rather demanding, that a free software volunteer pay a $2000+ penalty).
Trade Mark law is designed to prevent product confusion. This is the very reason that trademarking a single, common english word is an unacceptable perversion and misuse of the law, and should not be permitted, period. If the trademark beaurocracies of the world can't be bothered to use discretion and restraint in granting trademarks, then we need to get an intelligent and reasonably uncorrupt judicial system (yeah, I know, fat chance of that happening within our lifetimes) to overturn these sorts of things.
"Adobe Illustrator" and "KDE Killustrator" are not easilly confused. Indeed, "Adobe Illustrator" and "Killustrator" would be difficult for anyone to confuse, familiar or not with the KDE GNU/Linux product. "Illustrator" can be confused with many things, killustrator included. It is a common English word, and has no place in an even remotely sane world as someone's private intellectual property.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
So, I think the site in Germnay is much more than a operator, a PR agent, a few marketters, and a few lawyers...
Sure, I was only talking about my impression after talking to Adobe Germany on the phone. I could be perfectly wrong.
You see, whatever you do when you call the official German number (not the toll-free number, but the office location), the receptionist always transferred me to the call center operators.
The public relations department is outsorced and done by an external company.
There was noone available for comment at Adobe Germany, no matter what. Not just for me, a customer (I hate it, but I understand it when they treat customers that way), but also for a journalist I asked about this matter and who also tried in vain to get any Adobe Germany official on the phone.
And -- I must admit that I am reading between the lines -- what the PR woman told me sounded to me like "we cannot do a thing unless Adobe USA allows us to do it"...
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You may like my a cappella music
Hi,
being in Germany, I called Adobe Germany and told them -- in a polite way -- that I am unhappy with their way of dealing with a free software project. And that I, being the guy who decides what software to buy in my little brandnew software company, have chosen not to buy any Adobe products as a form of protest because I do not want to support this business behaviour.
After a bit of dialing and transferring, I finally reached an Adobe PR official instead of a clueless call center guy. And speaking to her, it was obvious that Adobe Germany was in a big mess there and that they were very nervous what to do.
This whole stunt appears to have been originated at Adobe USA and these German lawyers, I was told, were appointed by the US company.
Adobe Germany is more or less just a little call center for user support and a few marketing and sales people for the local German market. I have the impression that they are not allowed to act without approval from their US mother.
However, Adobe Germany was not told by Adobe USA that they would go after the Killustrator team. And since you Americans had a National Holiday last week right during the incident, the German officials were unable to ask their US superiors what to do about it until the end of the weekend.
Meanwhile, Adobe Germany was amid a storm of a roaring protest, beginning with mail bombs of "fuck you" messages and angry phone calls all day. My polite call must have been a very unusual thing that day.
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You may like my a cappella music
Illustrator may be a generic name/word/what-have-you--but Illustrator-the-vector-graphics-computer-program is most emphatically not generic. Adobe isn't trying to claim sole dominion over all uses of the word Illustrator--just the use of the word Illustrator for which it holds a trademark.
People, it's the same fallacy that the anime fansub traders fall into--the ones who think that because they're not out to make a profit, the copyright law doesn't apply to them. Apparently the people who name these programs--these Killustrators and FreeMWares (yes, I know FreeMWare changed the name back to the name of the project they borrowed code from to begin with, but they still did choose and use that name for a while) and so on--are under the impression that because they're not trying to make a profit, the trademark law does not apply to them. I've got news for them--they're wrong.
This sort of situation is precisely the reason why we have trademark laws in the first place--to prevent one party from trying to trade on the good name and reputation of another party by creating a similar product with a similar name.
You may not like it, but there it is. And while the rabid German lawyers may have been over the line in their actions, Adobe is certainly not over the line to ask that the name be changed. Let's just be thankful that's all they're asking.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
This is true, but from what I can tell this whole affair was due to lawyers acting proactivley, instead of waiting to Adobe to ask them to act. I reckon that companies should really set out a set of rules of conduct with the their law firms, ie what sort of things that can do without waitng for the company to call on and what they have to wait to act an before getting an acknowledgement from the company that employed them. This would probably save the company money aswell.
Maybe we need a lawyer as borg icon?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I personally can see adobe's view on things, though I did not agree with their initial methods. I can understand their reasons (for the name change, but not the rest that I listed above). The fact that both sides have wised up is actually fairly refreshing.
- AMW
<rant>While I hate corporatism, the state of open-source application names makes me wish every company would do this. Any chance Adobe could make the stipulation that the new name does not have the letter "K" in it? Could we file a class action suit against the Gnome/GNU/KDE developers to keep them from using such ugly, unintuitive, useless names? Why does everything have to be Gno-this or K-that or GNU-whatever? Where's the application naming howto?</rant>
2. Microsoft's designation of its flagship word processing program as "Word" does in fact receive trademark protection. "Word" is a generic term to describe units of speech and text, not a generic term to describe word processing software.
3. McDonalds, to my knowledge, does not purport to have trademarked "Hamburger" (perhaps they have the phrase "McDonalds Hamburger" trademarked, but that's a different story). Perhaps you are thinking of the Hamburglar, that rascal.
4. I believe this is the case under the legal regimes of most economically developed nations. It is true that American and German law are different, but they are not so different that in Germany murder is legal and everyone is required by law to eat a pound of bacon a day. (That would be West Virginia.) Basic IP law, like basic contract law, is pretty much the same wherever you go.
KIllustrator, if anything, is closer to CorelDraw than anything else. Evidently, you've never used the program.
Neither have I. However, due to the name, and having known the name Adobe Illustrator (though not having used it), I assumed that the two were very similar in function and form. This, to me, seems to be the very purpose behind trademark law, to prevent confusion.
No, I wasn't confused, because I'm also familiar with KDE and Linux. However, would somebody not familiar with those two topics be confused by the names?
GPL made simple: What was my stuff is now our stuff. If you improve our stuff, please keep it our stuff.
KINK Killistrator is now KINK
I'm sorry[tm]. You'll need to rewrite this post[tm] to conform to current copyright laws.
"Class Act" -- (c) Warner Brothers, Entertainment
"SOO refreshing" --(c)Doublemint, Inc.; A division of Wrigley
"Well done" -- (c) Outback Steakhouse
"I'm Sorry" -- (c) Brenda Lee
"Post" -- (c) Kraft Foods International
They should rename it KNotIllustratorAtAll.
The cake is a pie
They could always call it KDraw or something :)
What about KorelDraw!
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I'm sure you can make reference to other products/trademarks in your documentation/advertising, so long as they are not slanderous or make false claims. So, yes, KIllustrator, as renamed to Foobar, could have somewhere in its docs "This feature is very similar to Adobe Illustrator's feature X". Obviously, you'd have to include the trademark notice like the one in your comment. I think the scope of trademarks are only for names and slogans, because they are the 'root' handles of the product. As a consumer, you probably arn't going to refer to the product in your head as 'similar to Adobe Illustrator' or whatever. The name of a product will probably be repeated in speech and in your head thousands of times over your relationship with said company/product/application.
/period/ - just that the name by which people refer to your product should not subvert brand recognition or consumer associations to competitors' and/or their products.
So there is, im my opinion, more importance that the name doesn't make reference to another trademark, since I think it's the subcouncious brand recognition that companies are worried about having subverted.
So I think we're in agreement here; it's not that you shouldn't be allowed to use the name or refer to another trademark
There is an interesting article here about Mastercard's attempts to sue Ralph Nader for using their 'Priceless' trademark in his campaign commercials. It's always a tough call, because, you essentially have to ask "Where do you draw the line between infringement (benifitting off of someone else's intellectual property or hard work), and things like parody and imitation-as-flattery?"
It's a tough call, and, unfortunately, in this winner-take-all capitalist-driven society, the money-makers are usually going to have their answer accepted as the truth. Anything that gets in the way of making a bigger profit is quickly labeled as anti-capitalist. Which is seen as a bad thing, since capitalism is the very social/economic foundation upon which western culture is built. I think, eventually, people will have to wake up and accept that socialist programs and mentalities provide the only real formal 'checks and balances' in grey-area issues like these; where the system would feel comfortable potentially err-ing on the side of less profitability. Mostly. To get back to the original issue, that's why it's nice that Adobe seems to have reacted to the court of public opinion proactively - something that happens all too rarely.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Does that mean the Adobe Jihad is off? I just finished making my Adobe-as-Borg icon.
How about KINI, which stands for Killustrator Is Not Illustrator?
Excuse me? I read the article, the message list, etc. and I felt the overall tone was one of "How can a company be allowed to trademark a single word?" I agree whole-heartedly with this point.
KIllustrator is a clone product of IllustratorKIllustrator, if anything, is closer to CorelDraw than anything else. Evidently, you've never used the program.
I think we should applaud Adobe on this.Applaud a company for using strong arm tactics to protect an obvious travesty of trademark law. I suppose you agree with Microsoft's business tactics as well. What is to say Microsoft won't go after KWord, Kwrite, Abiword, etc. How long before Adobe turns it legal team on XPDF (violating a possible tradmark on the letters P, D, & F)? I'm sick of watching the English laguage being turned into a commodity.
I gave up thinking of a cool sig
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Trouble is, consider the precedent this is going to set, if any single English word with a prefix can be "reserved" by a company who's previously used that word. Consider the words "Word", "Office", "Draw", "Sketch", "Paint", as examples. And then consider trying to create a word processor, an office suite or a drawing program without using any of these words in its name. It just isn't possible - these words describe the function of the program.
The base fact is that every word which can be used to describe a program's function, has been used at some point as the basis of the title of some program. "Draw" is CorelDraw, "Sketch" is AutoSketch, "Paint" has MS and Corel varieties.
Another thing - "Illustrator" only means "Adobe" to ppl who do lots of graphic design. Personally, I didn't know about it until this. But think of "KWord" and "KOffice" - I don't think there's a single computer user in the whole world who's not aware of MS's products using those base names. Let's be honest here - if it was viable to try and do this, MS would have done it a long time ago. The very fact that no other software company has tried this does rather tend to suggest that it's not a tenable argument.
Or maybe it suggests that no other company is as petty and small-minded as Adobe...
Grab.
I don't think it gets more fair than this. KIllustrator is grossly in violation of Adobe's trademark. Slashdotters all agreed on this on the previous article.
KIllustrator is a clone product of Illustrator, its the same type of product (software), doing the same thing (raster drawing). Of course the name is meant to capitalize on Adobe's product!
Now, Adobe has some courses of action. The one they are taking is by far the mildest and most polite. They need to protect their trademark. They need KIllustrator to get a new name. They can take this court, they can aim for monetary damages. They aren't.
I think we should applaud Adobe on this. They have to protect their trademark, after all. If nothing else, they are helping a KApplication get a better name.
Robert
I just checked, and www.KSlashdot.org is available.
troll#1: "Bastards! They're trying to leech off of the name of Slashdot!"
troll#2: "Bastards! Slashdot is trying to crush innovation! 'Kay'-Slashdot is obviously very different than just 'Slashdot'!"
Even if this is repeated again, it is still not true.
To send an "Abmahnung" for a trademark violation the lawyer can only act if told so by the trademark owner. This means that Adobe either told them to go after then Killustrator people or that they told them to go after anyone they think is in violation of the trademark.
The confusion arises from because there are other issues where many more people are allowed to send these "Abmahnungen". For example, if you advertise inappropriately then ANY competitioner can ask you to stop. But this is not the case here.
Walter
Well, ok, it may be nothing as compared to stopping development all together, but I think the issue goes deeper than a name. It's about control.
The distrubing part is that "illustrator" is a somewhat generic name, which does not specificlly indicate a piece of IP owned by Adobe Systems, Inc. Had this been a case of something like Kacrobat or Kphotoshop, then I would agree with their reasoning, maybe even say they're justified. But "illustrator" is just too generic.
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#nohup cat
In the best GNU fashion they should call it KINI (KINI Is Not Illustrator).
Or maybe ADWANK (Adobe Doesn't Want ADWANK Named Killustrator).
Then again, maybe not.
Isn't this the equivalent of the poor squeegee guy who cleans your windshield at the stoplight and then demands you pay for a service you did not want?
I never thought I'd demean impoverished people by comparing them to lawyers.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
KIllustratosphere
KDraw (already mentioned)
KPicture
Karicature
Ksketch
Kart
science is a religion
Kill-Illustrator!
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Your software may be free, but Adobe is a for-profit company.
Base your opinions upon whatever you like, but Adobe is just protecting whats theirs.
Are you people really naive enough to believe they have no basis to protect their IP rights? The names
Belong entirely to the company who trademarks the name "Illustrator". KDE should have known better.
To claim that Adobe was wrong is ridiculous. Clearly they have a legitimate complaint against KDE.
US Trademark law was on Adobe's side, and personally, I am glad to see Killustrator accepting responsibility for their acts.
Have you flamed SpanishInquisition t
GMUD is not a substitute for Adobe as a building material. Of course there are people who live in GMUD houses (and worlds for that matter) but these people spend way too much time in front of a computer.... Adobe at least gives you a real house, rather than a text-based simulation where you can interract with other geeks in a virtual world... OTOH, KBricks, interesting concept....\
Sorry... must be stuck in the MUD
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
With a name like "Adobe", is it any wonder that they played dirty and engaged in mud-slinging?
'I live in a.. ummm... ahh... KBrick house? no... GMud? ahh... whatever'
It's easy to write songs, you just sit down and write them.
Most companies would be suing them and cursing the GPL, and accusing Linux of infringing on their trademarks...
As far as the other stuff you say, though... I think you're probably right about them losing the Linux market. Although, actually, if they ported PhotoShop to Linux, I'd use it. (Provided it was actually *affordable*; I know it's a "hugely powerful" tool, but ~$600?! I'll sacrifice my familiarity with PhotoShop and just use the GIMP for that price...)
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suwain_2
Sounds like Adobe's PR people pulled the plug on Adobe's legal team.
Dr. Kai-Uwe upholsterer
Well, I'm certainly pleased to know that there's now a Free solution for all my upholstery needs.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
And by bringing this lawsuit up in the first place, and by forcing them to change their name, isn't that (at least temporarily) halting distrobution and development?
AFAIK it is still unclear whether Adobe were actually aware of the warning letter which was sent by the lawyers firm. (it never got as far as a lawsuit)
In Germany, law firms can send warning letters on another companies behalf and charge those they send them to for their time. The company for whom the warning is being sent is not neccessarlity aware that this has been done. There is more information on this in the earlier article, especially this posting