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Preliminary Injunction Against SuSE
Random Walk writes "The German news site Heise Online reports that on behalf of an anonymous client,
a lawyer has won a
preliminary injunction (German only)
against the Linux distributor SuSE.
The injunction forbids the delivery of SuSE CDs as long as they contain some program name that apparently violates a registered
trademark. No more details available, but SuSE seems to be in negotiations with the other party." Head over to the fish for translation.
Who is it and will this affect all of the other distributions? Perhaps some other company makes a yast??
Remember the Adobe vs Killustrator case? That was in Germany too. Someone said that it's common practice for legal firms to act 'freelance' and track down supposed violations without the prior approval of the trademark holder. Perhaps this is the same firm even.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
After Samba[1 ] and the kIllustrator[2 ] now a further open SOURCE program employs the lawyers. The attorney Guenter Frhr. v. Gravenreuth obtained a provisional order against the German Linux Distributor SuSE before the regional court Munich. The cause seems to be one on the SuSE d referenzierte open SOURCE often commodity. Gravenreuth let obvious forbid to the Nuernberger enterprise judicially to deliver its Linux distribution further as long as on it the disputed program name is contained. For SuSE from it a substantial financial loss could arise, if the copies already produced could not be issued any longer. Frhr. v. Gravenreuth acknowledged on demand a provisional order against the indication of an open SOURCE often commodity to have received. It did not want to call further details however, since its mandator " with the opponent agree " become and require no denomination. Christian Egle, press speaker of the SuSE GmbH, explained, his enterprise in the next days as the affair will express themselves
Remember kids! Guns don't kill people - Americans kill people.
Babelfish translation:
Gravenreuth against Linux Distributor SuSE
After Samba and kIllustrator now a further open SOURCE program employs the lawyers. The attorney Guenter Frhr. v. Gravenreuth obtained a provisional order against the German Linux Distributor SuSE before the regional court Munich. The cause seems to be one on the SuSE d referenzierte open SOURCE often commodity. Gravenreuth let obvious forbid to the Nuernberger enterprise judicially to deliver its Linux distribution further as long as on it the disputed program name is contained. For SuSE from it a substantial financial loss could arise, if the copies already produced could not be issued any longer.
Frhr. v. Gravenreuth acknowledged on demand a provisional order against the indication of an open SOURCE often commodity to have received. It did not want to call further details however, since its mandator " with the opponent agree " become and require no denomination. Christian Egle, press speaker of the SuSE GmbH, explained, his enterprise in the next days as the affair will express themselves. ( odi / c't)
Does OSDN own stock in altavista or something?
http://www.suse.com/en/products/suse_linux/i386/pa ckages_professional/index.html
/ pa ckages_personal/index.html
http://www.suse.com/en/products/suse_linux/i386
Ok, not sure if NVIDIA_kernel is actually made by Nvidia, that would do it.
The spell checker iGerman...maybe Mac was planning a lager-scented blond powerbook.
sax and sax2 seem to be SuSe specific...but I don't think anyone can sue over a name like "sax". Too generic.
"TerminatorX" is an audio mixer...though I think Public Enemy would shoot first, and bring the lawyers later...
You know, this could take a while...the company distributes 8 goddamn CD's full of litigation-feed.
I remember the OpenSSH guys were having trademark problems. Could it be related to that?
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
I imagine this has something to do with some product like Killustrator or some other knock of open-source product. So whoever this is was having trouble changing the program's name, so they decided to go after everyone who uses it. Sounds like someone is taking leasons from M$.
After Samba and kIllustrator, yet another open source program is in trouble. A regional court in Munich granted attorney general v. Gravenreuth a preliminary injunction against German Linux distributor SuSE. Apparently, the reason has to do with one of the open source programs contained in the SuSE distribution. The injunction forbids SuSE to continue distributing their product until the name of this program is changed. This could lead to SuSE suffering a substantial financial loss, as they can no longer sell CD's they've already manufactured.
Attorney general v. Gravenreuth confirmed he was requested to file suit on behalf of a third party, but declined to give further details, at the request of said third party. Christian Eagle, head of public relations at SuSE, stated his company will provide more information at a later date.
ok, so it's not shakespeare, but it's readable at least.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
If you're sueing someone from infringing your trademark, why would you want to keep your trademark a secret?
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
I don't know how many of you are aware of this, but this Gravenreuth guy, the attorney, is one of the most hated men in the German IT scene. He has been going to court over cases like these for at least ten years.
I once got a letter from him: Back in the old Amiga days, i posted a classified ad somewhere, since i wanted to sell some of my old hardware. A couple of days later, I got a letter from some girl (including picture), who listed some of her games and wanted to trade.
Back then, I heard of these Gravenreuth tactics, so I just threw it away. Even writing some witty response on the illegality of the proposal would have probably invited some action from the law firm.
Point someone WHICH program is meant?
If I remember correctly, and it was shown on Slashdot, an open source project was sued by a german lawyer for trademark violation and created a lot of ill will. What happened, if memory serves, is that in Germany, a lawyer can sue for trademark violation, even without the knowledge, consent, or business dealings with the party being 'violated'.
Great system, huh? So, a lawyer found a trademark violation, and is going after it. Fun stuff. I'm sure we'll see even more.
This lawyer v. Gravenreuth is quite well known (and hated) in Germany. He's done lots of "Abmahnungen". This means cashing in money for stuff like usage of the term "FTP Explorer" which supposedly violates a Trademark of Symicron (sp?). A case of use of a chipset codename by shops for advertisement is also well-known.
Of course, he only evers goes after smaller fish, but doesn't dare trying the same with bigger companies (unfortunately, or he'd at last get his nose bloody).
I really wonder which name and company this is all about. I'd hate to see SuSE hurt for one of Gravenreuth's usual BS. They definitely need to spend their money on improving their distro, not on laywers (saying this as a long-time SuSE user who is not too convinced of the current 7.3 version).
Neither English nor German is my first language, so flames to /dev/null please...
Gravenreuth versus Linux Distributor SuSE
After Samba and kIllustrator, another Open Source program is keeping the lawyers busy. The lawyer Günter Frhr. v. Gravenreuth has obtained a preliminary injunction from the State Court in Munich against the German Linux distributor SuSE. The reason seems to be an Open Source program referenced (?) on the SuSE CD. Apparently Gravenreuth has had the court ban the firm from Nürnberg from further distributing its Linux distribution as long as the debated program name is included. This could lead to substantial financial loss for SuSE, if the already produced copies are no longer allowed to be sold.
Frhr. v. Gravenreuth, when asked, confirmed he had obtained a preliminary injunction against the mark used by an Open Source software package. But he would not give further details, because his client would "come to an agreement with the opponent" and didn't want to be named. Christian Egle, press spokesman for SuSE, said that the firm would release a statement on the matter within the next few days.
From the earlier slashdot story on the Killustrator problems: Comment on the German system from a German
Best Slashdot Co
I think the SuSE, those economically anyway not particularly well
there stand, probably by a large company one buys. Because if that
Sales of the Linux Paketet is stopped, Suse the CDs in einstampfen and
again to press must, then SuSE has genuine money problems.
The question is thus my opinion after not who IS BOUGHT, but
who the buyer is.
IBM?
Power sense, there IBM strong interest in Linux has and the Spezilalisten
of SuSE well to bulge out could.
Talk-has?
Improbably, but by the purchase of SuSE would have talk-has one
GIANT market share.
Apple?
VERY improbably. SuSE could build however well at the Darwin Kernel.
Microsoft?
STILL more improbably, but not times so stupidly. One could to
a Windows and on the other hand would have one improves which against Linux in
the hand. In addition one could place finally ms Linux completely (becomes
already since eternities on www.mslinux.org announced). But I believe
that the SuSE cooperates rather closed suicide would commit...
I don't know where the poster got this from but Freiherr von Gravenreuth is NOT an Attorney General. He is just a lawyer working for his own money.
The mandator shank does not want to be called? Why? Nobody may
experienced whose "rights" become hurt, thus one directly the next
to change can take the money in order? When hears weak-join finally times
up!!
Perhaps the trouble makes itself and searches in Munich times
Court something, perhaps one knows there which experienced!
Chris
... is also that against SuSE goes and not against the developer
it is igentlich Hahnebuechen to load SuSE with it...
Yeah I know, my German is not perfect (I'm Dutch), but those babelfish translations hurt.
Gravenreuth vs. Linux distributor SuSE
After Samba and KIllustrator yet another Open Source program is keeping lawyers busy. Lawyer Guenther Freiherr(1) von Gravenreuth has obtained a preliminary injunction against German Linux distributor SuSE from the Muenchen State Court. The reason seems to be an Open Source program referenced on a SuSE-CD. It appears(2) that Gravenreuth has had the court forbid further shipments of the Neuremberg company's Linux distribution, as long as the contested program's name is used in that. This could lead to substantial losses for SuSE if it can no longer ship the already produced copies.
When asked, Freiherr von Gravenreuth confirmed to have obtained a preliminary injunction against the name(3) of an Open Source program. He declined to name further details because his client would want "to settle with the opposition" and did not want to be named. Christian Egle, press spokesman for SuSE GmbH, declared that his company would make its position known in the coming days.
Notes:
- Freiherr: a title of minor nobility. Comparable to the English 'Sir'.
- The original had "Offenbar" which can be translated in a variety of ways. I think that "It appears" is best here.
- "Kennzeichnung" litteraly means "designation", or "distinguishing aspect". In context, "name" makes sense, but it is not the best translation.
I did have to play a little with the sentence construction, but I think this will make sense.On a side note: Why does this bloody Windows (I'm at work) insist on raising the focused window? At home (Debian GNU/Linux) I could have left the original article on top and typed in the textbox simultaneously. Now I had to switch constantly. Grrr.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
... isn't that entrapment (and therefore inadmissable as evidence) in common-law jurisdictions ?
Here's a FAQ about lawyer Gravenreuth . http://www.klostermaier.de/fvg/faq.html
Gravenreuth against Linux-Distribution SuSE
After Samba and kIllustrator there is another open-source-program which keeps the attorneys busy. The lawyer Günter Frhr. v. Gravenreuth has won a preliminary injunction at the Landgericht (court) in Munich against the German Linux distributor SuSE. The cause seems to be some open-source-software referenced on one of SuSE's CDs. Apparently Gravenreuth keeps the company from Nuremberg legally from delivering their Linux-distribution any further, as long as it contains the contoversial program name. This could bring a significant financial loss for SuSE if the already produced copies couldn't be sold any more.
Mr. Gravenreuth confirmed on inquiry to be granted a preliminary injunction against the name of an open-source-software. But he didn't want to tell further details, since his client is going to aggree with the opponent and would like not to be mentioned. Christian Egle, press spokesman of SuSE, explained that his company would express itself on the matter in the next days.
both serve no meaningful purpose in our society and should in a calm minute think about themselves.
The Associated Press is reporting that Dave Thomas, from the Wendy's comercials is dead at 69. Yahoo has a story here.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20020108/ts/obit_t homas_8.html
I stand corrected, thanks (misread "Rechtsanwalt" for "Reichsanwalt" and assumed it to mean sth like "Attorney General". Guess I should've paid more attention in German class way back when).
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
Entrapment is a criminal doctrine, not civil. It applies to the police going too far--convincing someone to commit a crime they otherwise would not (simply asking or offering the crime isn't enough.). THink of Delorean (sp?). The goverment harassed a man with a failing business with repeated opportunities to commit a lucrative time, after repeatedly being told no. They *created* the criminal. This is a far cry from a one time offer.
WHile this doesn't apply, the doctrine of "estoppel" could potentially apply. In a nutshell, this doctrine says, "even though you may be legally correct, your own conduct makes it inequitable for you to be able to make that argument, so you can't."
It would probably be a close call as described above.
hawk, common law lawyer
From what I've heard from a source close to the action he sues SuSE (no pun intended) in the name of crayon, a company which just distributes some lame graphic sets.
*sigh*
Thanks for the tip. (Un)fortunately our admins have some clue, and these NT boxes are locked down pretty good. No third party software installs for me, sorry.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
That's one of the bad things about Open Source software in general: no fun with lawsuits!
At least SuSe lucked out with offering commercial software. Just think of all those poor Debian saps who'll never see the court jesters.
When it comes to being a major public pain in the butt, Gravenreuth dwarves Gates and Balmer by far.
This german guy is so f*cking full of sh*t, he's even a shame to the lawyers trade on this whole flippin' planet!
From what I gather he needs bodyguards whenever he moves in public. Note that this is germany where violence in public is considerably more seldom than in the US. Anyhow, he'd better have them if I ever bumb into this creep.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
mv /bin/offending_name /bin/to_hell_with_gravenreuth
alias offending_name=to_hell_with_gravenreuth
Of course, you should feel free to use classic four-letter Anglo-Saxon words in your implementation, should that better fit your mood. :-)
Instead of being the typical automaton and use the fish, try the google language translators.
Why?
Cause you can directly link to the translated page.
Something Altavista doesn't like.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I have question here: From an outsiders point of view these German "Abmahnungen" seem like a really bad idea as they can be abused by scum like this lawyer. Why do they still exist? I guess there is a real good reason but if it means that normal people making a tiny mistake in classified ads or hobby coders get fucked by gready selfserving lawyers, the possitive side would have to be large. I'm sorry if this is a simplistic view, I don't have the whole picture by a long way so I have to ask our German readers, what are the possitives and are people in Germany annoyed by the Abmahnungen lawyers picking on the little guy?
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
I am sooo glad computer translation sucks as bad as it does (I work as a translator, though not from German, that's why). Both the Google translator and Babelfish still fail to yield proper English texts instead of translated single words stuck together, even after years and years of research. This is not a complex article requiring in-depth knowledge of German customs and culture, mind you, it's a simple narration of facts.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
Why is putting an ad up to sell old hardware illegal? Or something that a law firm would want to 'entrap' someone over?
creation science book
There is a project at Sourceforge called Props. I informed them about a name clash with a system developed at the telecom giant Ericsson. However, they were quite uninterested in changing their name as they believed they were sufficiently distinct from that system. That attitude seems unhealthy, and may damage the open source in the long run.
So if I start a Kr**t company and call it Windotcom GmbH, we can get this guy to raise an injunction against Microsoft to recall all versions of Windows?
Extortion is the most reasonable hypothesis. True, it's being done under color of law, so perhaps extortion is not precisely the correct term, but I can't think of a better one.
This appears precisely cognate to the folks who register web-site URLs with company names, and then barely use them (perhaps only post an "Under-Construction" page). That, however, has been ruled illegal.
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Doesn't Germany have some sort of public record for court transactions - unless there is a damn good reason, the records of plaintiff and defendant are a matter of public record? (Like most other countries?)
I somehow doubt "potential bad press" would count as a good reason to prevent publication of court records.
Since they've already been to court and had a preliminary injunction, that would mean that the plaintiff's name is a matter of public record, no?
Couldn't someone in Munich find out some more info?
I've just noticed today's anti-spam obfuscation on my own post - I'm VERY opposed to the existence of any organization with the goal to spam Red Hat (SPAMredhat.com).
Slashdot, stop creating this domain or I'll give him a call... NOT.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Recursive Google fun on this law article:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F %2Ftranslate.google.com%2Ftranslate%3Fu%3Dhttp%253 A%252F%252Fwww.heise.de%252Fbin%252Fnt.print%252Fn ewsticker%252Fdata%252Fodi-07.01.02-000%252F%253Fi d%253Dfa2a03da%2526todo%253Dprint%26langpair%3Dde% 257Cen%26hl%3Den&langpair=en%7Cde&hl=en
(Too bad the re-translation to English again breaks the URL.)
The funny thing, even with this article being in German, for me is that Lawian speak still doesn't make sense after encryption.
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
Once again we see the hypocrisy of the Open
Source movement. When FSF uses the *law* to
enforce license infringments it's all so
*wonderful*. But, when a corporation or someone
"outside" of the Open Source community uses the
*law* to protect itself and its products it's so
*evil*. What a bunch of lame-o hypocrites.
Google now has a translator that will translate from German (and other languages, of course).
Zodiac Survey
I'm thinking of switching to SuSE myself (current Mandrake user), mainly to get an LFS (Large File System - > 2GB) enhanced 2.2 kernel which SuSE has (seeing as the 2.4 VM *still* sucks, and I have to wonder if it'll ever be fixed, or we'll have to wait for 2.6)... Anyway, what's wrong with 7.3? Would you recommend 7.2?
hummm
A reader of The Register provides this translation:
After Samba and kIllustrator, yet another open-source-program fillsthe pockets of lawyers. The [ill-reputed] German lawyer Günther Freiherr von Gravenreuth has won a preliminary injunction at the Munich District Court against the German Linux-distributor SuSE.
The reason seems to be an open-source-software referenced on one of the SuSE-CDs. Apparently Gravenreuth has prohibited the Nurenberg based company from delivering its Linux-distribution,
as long as the disputed program name is contained on the disks.
SuSE could face serious financial losses if the copies already produced cannot be sold.
Being asked, Freiherr von Gravenreuth confirms the preliminary injunction against the name of the open-source-software, but refuses to give any more details, since his client wishes to get a settlement with "the opponent" and doesn't want to be named.
SuSE spokesman Christian Egle says his company will publish a statement in a few days.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Murder seems a tad harsh.
This guy deserves something nasty, but he hasn't offended me to the point where I would fly to Germany, track him down, and shoot him. I expect lots of people feel the same. However, it's difficult to harness this energy. 100,000 mildy pissed off people are less dangerous than 1 person who is completely deranged with anger.
There must be a mechanism for large numbers of people to collaborate on retribution.
Maybe someone could suggest something nasty to do to him (preferably legal, but not necessarily) which would have quite an effect if 1000s of people participated.
Don't get too comfortable. :)
Your job will soon be made obsolete by advancing AI. Maybe you should consider writing movie reviews instead...we'll still need humans for that job for quite a while longer.
--
Power to the Peaceful
Huh. How did you get that result?
This is what I was given:
----
In A.D. 2002, war was beginning. What happen? SuSe get signal. Main injunction turn on. It's Gravenreuth! A regional court in Munich say "How are you gentlemen! All SuSe distribution are belong to us. You have no chance to survive make your time." Apparently, somebody set SuSe up the bomb. The injunction forbids SuSE to continue to take off every 'zig' until SuSe knows what they are doing.
Attorney general v. Gravenreuth confirmed he was requested to send SuSe on the way to destruction on behalf of a third party, but declined to give further details. What Suse say! Christian Eagle, head of public relations at SuSe, stated his company will move 'zig' and provide more information at a later date. For great justice.
----
Huh. Maybe I accidentally translated into Japanese first...
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
I wonder why he chose SuSE rather than any other distro (they're the only ones whose key distinctive feature is non-Free - YaST)...
But much as I despise the non-free nature of the distro, I do hope SuSE can stand up to this asshole.
If the lawyer's not prepared either to name his "client" (yeah, right) or to tackle the package with a "conflicting" name at source, then he really has to be a dipshit, sorry, I mean "he deserves to lose in court".
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
#!/bin/sh
cd $INSTALLDIR
mv crayon.rpm bite_me.rpm
exit
That can't be it. Wouldn't Crayola (sp?) have issues with that lawsuit. Crayon is a generic word in American English (I can't speak for other versions of te English language). That would be stupid if it is the real issue. This just reminds me why I dislike some lawyers.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Looks like one of Bill Gates' cronies is trolling.
Not to give him the attention he obviously craves, but I feel the need to put a sensible response in the public record here, so I'll go ahead and mention something which may be obvious to all but then again, may not. Obviously, this person doesn't use Linux much. In fact I bet most of this person's "information" comes from secondhand sources.
For instance, I've worked with Linux for years, both at dot-coms and at home. I've never lost data because of an improper shutdown. In fact, on the few occasions in which I've had to improperly shut down my system, or lost power through a blackout, on the very next boot the OS checked my drive partitions and fixed any that were affected. Which, interestingly enough, Windows does too, so you can't really say Linux takes a hit for that, can you? At least, not if you're trying to be fair and impartial.
As far as Linux crashing, well, when's it going to crash? I haven't had my first crash yet, and I've been playing with Linux on at least a hobbyist level since 1996 or so. You can malign us Linux types all you want for saying it doesn't crash, but really, if I haven't had a crash, what am I supposed to say? Am I supposed to make one up to make you feel better? Or should I describe my actual experience, which is that my Linux boxen haven't crashed yet? Seriously. I don't know anyone with a Linux box that actually crashed by itself. I managed to crash my sound system once by playing around with it, and deliberately tormenting it, which was fun for a while, but that was on purpose. Even that didn't bring the OS down. It just got quieter for a while.
And, about the "cost" of maintaining Linux? What, you don't have to hire admins for NT boxes? And, with all the security risks and downtime IIS causes, you don't think that ups the price of an MS piece-of-shit system a bit? Here's a good question: which is more expensive? A Taos sysadmin on contract maintaining a Linux box running Apache (which might run without incident for years), or an NT/IIS system that manages to bring down your entire internal network and farm out all your trade secrets and internal data (client lists, salary tables, etc) to the outside world? After all, it's the Microsoft systems that are vulnerable to the recent scads of worms, viruses, etc, not the Linux servers. Just look at Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, aka the Virus Propagation System. Not to mention the liability if you end up becoming a Warez site and get sued for your negligence...
Of course, you forgot to mention that the Gartner group suggested this year that companies move away from the use of IIS as a web serving platform for these very reasons. And, you forgot to mention the huge cost of the new Microsoft "bend 'em and rape 'em" licensing schemes. But I don't want to start splitting hairs.
FOR THE RECORD, let's just say that this dope is just some Microsoft flack trying to poison the public record by simulating a professional IT worker pissing and moaning. If he's in IT at all, I bet he's an MSCE or something. And, this is just another of a long string of FUD attacks Microsoft has been making on Linux because Microsoft itself internally admits that it can't compete.
By the way: If operating systems were houses,
Linux: a sturdy scottish keep, with heavy oaken doors and solid walls. Electrical systems and plumbing are retrofitted in, and tend to work fairly well. Tends to be a little chilly (not as user friendly, ha ha) and requires a little bit of maintenance over time.
Windows: A manufactured home which looks very modern and beautiful. All doors are screen doors, but they are secured by hook-and-eye fasteners on the inside, and little stickers that say "Secured by hook and eye fasteners" so everyone knows they won't be able to break in. The company regularly issues press releases describing their improvements to the hook and eye fastener, which makes its clients feel much better. At random intervals, the power shuts down and the toilets overflow. At these times, the homeowner must go out to the garage, turn off all the circuit breakers, wait thirty seconds, and turn them back on. Finally, if he builds an addition onto the home, or does something unexpected like putting up a shed, Microsoft employees padlock the house until he can call up and describe his new shed.
Ok, all you microsoft flunkies, go ahead and start flaming me. But you all know it's true, and so does your boss, Bill.
thats irrelevand to our stuid legal system ;) Mr. Gravenreuth is also famous for filling injunctions about the word "Explorer" used in a computer-enviroment. Mind u .. M$ did "license" the name explorer in germany ;) aw .. what the joy of a good legal system ;)
In the U.S. we have a traditional remedy for removing dangers to the community who have not broken the law. TAR and FEATHER the bastard and Ride him out on a rail.
Unfortunately lawyers, judges(lawyers) and legislators(lawyers) have frowned on this practice(self interest).
Murder is wrong. (Somebody get the rope) A large portion of the community should band together to solve this problem.
It looks so much like English... only not.
Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all the unhappy people.
Exactly. And perhaps that is the valid defense. Otherwise, why wouldn't this scumbag sue other distros or the product creators?
It appears to me that SuSE did no wrong here as they bundled a product they did not give the name to.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Alle Ihr Warenzeichen sind gehören uns.
Gravenreuth
Incidently, as the article says, Krayon is not even included in SuSE 7.3, apart from a KDE-Menu entry. Krayon is unmaintained upstream and so not longer part of Koffice.
The article finishes with the question whether Distributors will have to scan their packages for possible namespace clashes and in doing so, might abandon a loarge portion of free software that's not cleared.
In a land where you can get sued for using the colour Magenta anything can happen, I guess.
Michael
IANAL, but before this article I had no negative feeling against any lawyer.
I bet if he reads this he's going to want to sue me too. Go ahead, that'll give me the chance to do the above myself.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Maybe it's time for SuSE to upgrade to the newest KDE-stable?
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Sorry dude, but no sigar.
I found the parent post much more credible than this standard Slashdot anti-MS dribble..
Any serious Unix admits will tell you that Linux is a bad attempt at cloning Unix. Linux is like an expensive sound or video card for PC's: it's expensive and better than cheaper models, but it can't hold a candle to PROFESSIONAL gear. Linux is not professional. Not because it's open source (FreeBSD is open source and can at least be called professional), but because of all the reasons in the parent post.
Funniest thing about this (according to www.heise.de) is that Krayon is in the start menu but not installed, and nowhere to find on CD... no comment is my only word
hehe
I modded the Troll Investigation and I got
Goto K->Control Center->Window behavior
There is a tab there called Focus, play with the options there until the window manager behaves the way you like.
If you want, the source code is available, so you can add whatever options you want to this menu. If you are illiterate in regards to programming, you can pay someone who can read and write in the modern age to do the work for you.
They probably wouldn't be able to sue, since they are in a different industry. Crayon is in the same industry (they sell computer graphic stuff) so their case is much stronger.
Looking at the web site, though - the design is so plain, that it looks like the company has been setup solely for the purpose of this lawsuit. There is not a single decent graphic on their site - and that's what they claim to be selling...
All their products are CDROMs with image collections. The actual company is "Software Service Seidel", the "Crayon Vertriebs GmbH" which is their subsidiary, was founded last summer. (see: "wir über uns" )
put a gun against that fucker's head and pulled the trigger. I don't live all that far from the bastard and who knows...
Here is what we need to do:
1: Create a PERL script which creates canned cease-and-disist letters. Call it Gravenruth.
2: Trade-mark the program name.
3: Sue this fellow for trademark infringement (offering a confusingly similar product with the same name).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Basically: it's about Krayon, which used to be part of the KOffice suite. The program is not actually on the SuSE CD, but there is a leftover entry in the KDE menu, labeled Krayon.
Krayon is supposed to conflict with the "Crayon" trademark, which is held by Seidel Softwareservice .
Gravenreuth the "lawyer" who wrote this Abmahnung stated that he's prepared to settle with SuSE.
It's presumed that SuSE will want to settle, too.
I don't know how many of you are aware of this, but this Gravenreuth guy, the attorney, is one of the most hated men in the German IT scene. He has been going to court over cases like these for at least ten years.
A similar thing happened in Silicon Valley. A guy got a patent on the bitwise-XOR cursor. This firm of three lawyers got hold of it. Then every time a hi-tek company was going public - WHETHER THEY USED AN XOR CURSOR OR NOT - they'd file suit. And offer to settle for some non-trivial pittance like $10,000.
Now going public is a touchy proposition, and having a suit pending against you can cost you big time, regardless of the suit's merits. So essentially all the companies knuckled under. It amounted to a small tax on going public.
And the people in question were the most hated in the Silicon Valley financial community for a decade or more. (There were rumors that a hit had been contracted...)
(Funny thing - I once worked for a company that had a patent on the BLINKING cursor, back in the days of character-only terminals. They never used it for this sort of thing - or litigated it at all. Instead they kept it in the pile of patents to be used in a countersuit against anyone who sued THEM for patent infringement.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Indeed, the "Activation follows mouse (X-Mouse)" and "Autoraise when activating" options in Tweak UI are quite nice, but sadly some apps don't seem to play nice.
Visio for example seems to raise itself when activated even if you have it disabled in Tweak UI.
In Opera the auto-complete popup from the url bar seems to be a seperate window. So if you click in the url bar and happen to leave the mouse where the url popup will appear and start typing the popup appears and the Opera window deactivates and all your typing is for nothing.
Still, it's better than nothing.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
A bit tricky is: krayon is *not* included in SuSE 7.3 although in the KDE-startmenu there is an entry for krayon and that seems already enough for a preliminary injunction. Software-"Company" Crayon Vertrieb GmbH i.G. fears that their name might be confused with krayon and therefore sent FvG as their lawyer.
The heise.de article is also starting to think about consequences out of such cases regarding other Distribution-makers such as Debian. These might face a significant amount of work in the future to make sure none of the thousands of packets included might be consfused with some registered brand.
-al
Since most of us are no Germans or may not be Euporean Union citzens..
Can we distribute Suse and take the money gained and give back to the Suse company?
TRhat way this Lawyer would have soemthing over one million people to sue..which no court will allow..:)
Don't Tread on OpenSource
KOffice strikes again. This time though he's not got much of a case.
a) He's suing the wrong people, they aren't responsible for the name of the product (though this may be legally weak).
b) It's a general term relating to art. There is no other similar product with a similar name - so no confusion. Crayon has been in the English vocabulary since the 17th century here's Merriam Websters take:
Crayon: noun
Etymology: French, crayon, pencil, from diminutive of craie chalk, from Latin creta
Date: 1644
1 : a stick of white or colored chalk or of colored wax used for writing or drawing
2 : a crayon drawing
Christ Germany's got one fscked up legal system if he can do half of what I've heard.
Let's not forget the BIG bully - M$ kWord, kOffice. Since M$ has stated Linux is it's gereatest threat and wentbefore Congress asking for Linux to be banned in the U.S., this is where I'd point _MY_ finger.
CRAYON has really nice CDROM stuff. You may order online here.
Payment by cash on delivery or by credit card...
Translation:
Vor und Nachname: Your name
Firma: Your company
Telefon: Your phone
Strasse: Your street
Postleitzahl: Your zip code
Land: Your country
Nachnahme: cash on delivery (C.O.D)
Auslandsnachnahme: foreign C.O.D
Kredit Karte: your your credit card
Abschicken; send it!!
looks like a real winner. I ordered one. Don't forget to supply them with a valid email address so you can confirm your order. Yahoo is your friend.
Don't worry, both KDE and Gnome are busy copying the click-raises-the-window "feature" so you can be just as annoyed with Linux as with Windows! It is very frustrating to see this, I like Linux because it is different and innovative, not because it is "not MicroSoft".
Trust me, Linux is still very different and innovative -- if you want it to be. I've been using the ion window manager for the last several days, and love it. Go ahead, give it a try. If you're the sort of person who uses stuff out of the box... well, then you're the sort of person all the Windows-workalike code is written for.
To give a brief intro: ion doesn't have window raising, because it doesn't have windows -- not the usual paper-on-a-desktop metaphor, anyhow; it's more like the split-window metaphor from emacs or vim combined with multiple-desktop functionality and a highly keyboard-accessible interface (though the default keybindings might need some adjusting to be to your liking). It's sweet. Really. Try it.
God damn! not only CD image collections.
They are offering publishing of other people software.
YES! PUBLISH MY SOFTWARE! SUE ME! YES! YES! YES! AAAAAAAAAA! I COME!
Definitly publishing of software! Sue them illegaly!
Anybody want their service maybe????
(most perverted desires of lonely programmer)
This was a KDE utility for monitoring man-made multi-threaded processes.
Dear God, is that the time? It's way past my bedtime.
Backward%20compatibility%20is%20over-rated
It's people like you that give trolls a bad name.
.
Thank gawd someone else agrees that Bill Gates is GAWD ALMIGHTY.
/.
I thought I was alone here at
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Doesn't matter where you tread, unless it's a nonsense word, there's probably a trademark on it somewhere in the world. Sigh...
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
yeh I can't see how someone could sue over the word crayon, its a generic word in English and many other languages
Heise just reported that SuSE and Crayon now reached an agreement and settled the case, so SuSE may continue to sell their distro CDs.
The similarity in Krayon and Crayon is purely in the pronunciation. You cannot argue that the similarity in the spelling is significant... "Crayon" is also pretty close to Canyon, Canton and Croydon. No-one could possibly claim and infringement there. So the SuSE problem is simple: rename Krayon, Krayon, pronounced K-rayon. Simple!
return 0; }
See
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories
The register reports that this is settled out of court. Also has an interesting description of the German lawer :-)
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered.....my life is my own.
I saw posted this morning on KDEs Site. It appears as though the dispute has been settled, all injuctions have been removed and SuSE has been forced to make no licensing payments. Check out the posting here http://dot.kde.org/1010560070/. It is good to see that common sense took over and an unnecessary court case was avoided. Question: Is it just me or are companies becoming more and more shoot first and ask questions later than they used to be?
I have been meaning to look at the source code, I do think the kde people would be receptive to changes (I have also written a window manager of my own flwm, so I think I can do this).
One difficulty with both major window managers is the "what does this mouse button do" type of controls. These are not user friendly, allow you to set it to an infinite number of useless settings, and often do not allow you to set it to behave as wanted. I would prefer a few checkmarks to control the major unknowns about window management:
Click-to-type or point-to-type (for point to type just use sloppy focus, the others serve no reason).
Click in contents raises window.
Timeout to raise focused window (works in click-to-type as well as point-to-type).
Dragging or resizing a window (using the title bar or window border) raises it.
In my opinion these are the only things that need changes. What each mouse button does can be fixed by the window manager or intelligently figured out from the above settings.