Litigation Against The Mobilix Mobile Unix Website

powerset writes: "Mobilix has just posted a news item describing a legal challenge from the holder of the 'Asterix' and 'Obelix' trademarks. Despite widespread use of the '-ix' suffix as documented in the note, a quarter million dollars in damages and prison time are being threatened, and the note also mentions a possible connection to the SuSE case."

Comments

Re:...

[dvoosten]

In Europe there is a very clear seperation between trademark classes. This lawsuit is going nowhere because of the fact that it is clear mobilix has no intention of competing with Uderzo. So in the trademark class of names relating to computer technology, Mobilix was the first to claim it and is therefor the owner. There are ofcourse murkier examples. For instance, a Dutch television station wanted to change their name to ME, but that name was trademark by a clothing line. The clothing line sued and won because the television station often marketed baseball caps and t-shirt with their logo on it. This is a reasonable claim. The Mobilix claim is just ridiculous. Not only because it's a different trade mark class, but also because Uderzo has had more then enough time in the past to sue Unix, Posix, Ultrix, etc. and has made no move to do so. They cannot justify why Mobilix should be a worse threat. If the Mobilix people let this come before the European appeal court, they will win, no doubt about it.