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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.
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
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 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.
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.
Rumours go it is still kIllustrator, which is no called "Krayon", and some sucker has a trademark called "Crayon" and runs a website crayon.de.
It's not easy, being green. -- Kermit the Frog
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
To handle your side note, download and install PowerToys from M$ and change the setting. With my NT box at work, I can change focus w/o raising the window.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
these German "Abmahnungen" seem like a really bad idea as they can be abused by scum like this lawyer.
an idea that can be exploited is not necessarily a bad idea. Think of an idea just as a tool. Just because you can hurt someone with a hammer, a hammer is not a bad thing by design.
Why do they still exist?
-alAn "Abmahnung" is intended to prevent a lawsuit. The idea behind it is, that company A shall be able to have a means against unfair competition done by company B without having to go to court and have a year-lasting lawsuit. At least that is what the means of "Abmahung" was developed for.
The problem is, that german jurisdiction tends towards the attitude that any online activity can be interpreted as "taking part in brand competition" and therefore "Abmahnung" gets applied to virtually everyone in the same way, be he a hobbyist, an university, an OS-programmer or a company.
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