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SuSE No Longer Barred From Selling
MobyTurbo writes "According to a press release SuSE is no longer barred from selling Linux as reported and discussed in a thread on slashdot. SuSE is settling out of court with a German company called "Crayon" that claims that the KDE app Krayon violates their trademark. Incidentally, this vulnerability probably applies to several other distributions."
Incidentally, this vulnerability probably applies to several other distributions.
I would think this only affects distros that have operations in Germany.
Has Crayon settled with just SuSE or can someone sue Redhat,Mandrake,Debian, ect. on their behalf?
What does Crayola have to say about this?
Walk with Music;
Zdnet reports that the "Krayon" app isn't even included in the distro. Also, "Crayon apparently was not interested in pursuing the case" and "In Germany, trademark suits can be filed by any attorney, even if that attorney doesn't represent the trademark holder" So it looks like the lawyer saw the opportunity for a quick kill, and missed.
Best Slashdot Co
Current trademark laws are "bugs". We need to fugure out how to remove these bugs, not just how to patch the symptoms.
Acts@core.mailboks.com Acrux@core.mailboks.com Adam@core.mailboks.com Adar@core.mailboks.com Ada@core.mailboks.com
I suppose they must have done some market research and discovered that only a small percentage of children were actually eschewing real Crayons and turning to a KDE menu option for their coloring needs. Their colored-wax-stick market share is safe.
And why it did take it against SUSE instead of against the writer of the application?
Or if they are going to do something against Red Hat, Mandrake, Debian, etc...
And what the name of the application is?
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Since they are Crayola, could they bring suit against the German company? Could a lawyer in Gemany bring suit against the folks who brought suit against SuSE? Could a lawyer nominally working for SuSE bring suit on behalf of Binney&Smith?
www.eFax.com are spammers
DOWN MY PANTS
Actually, it seems the attorneys who took out the injunction were acting without the authority of the trademark holder, who was then found to be indifferent to the issue and not interested in pursuing it. It seems to be a quirk of German law that attorneys can do this (act first and get authorisation later).
The Register has an article on this story here
Read this.
this wasn't in the US . . . because if it were not only would the company care, they'd realize they could make a killing. thankfully Germans seem to realize that such lawsuits shouldn't really happen, and drop them. :)
Go Germany
According to The Register, the whole thing was just a scam-some-cash scheme by Crayon, aided by some lawyer with a bit of a reputation for this sort of thing...
Perhaps crayon is considered a general word, like tissue. The trademark name comes from the brand, in this case Crayola (Kleenex).
Unless Crayola has a trademark in Germany then they are pretty much out of luck. Also, see my link above for Tess and see if Crayola even has a trademark on Crayons. Seems to me that Crayons came before Crayola but I am too tired to do the research myself (is there a mod for lazy?).
No, probably not. The German trademark laws are strong in protecting trademarks of German companies, but an "outsider" stands no chance. Besides, I don't think that Binney&Smith have ever claimed that they own the trademark on "crayon", just "Crayola"
German companies have been "punitively" stripped of their trademarks outside of Germany, however. Perhaps the most famous example is the Bayer trademark on Aspirin; this trademark was taken away in the US and it became a generic term there sometime around WW I. In most of the rest of the world it is a trademark, not a generic term.
http://www.crayon.de/produkte.html They make software, not crayons :)
The Bigger The Headache The Bigger the Pill
..to have a lot of this sort of thing happening lately.
Maybe they should start doing something constructive with names, and pound out programs like KDE Text Editor, KDE Drawing Program, KDE Buzzwordless Program.
Really, why do programs need 'cool names'?
If it's a text editor, call it a freakin' text editor. If it's a browser, call it a freakin' browser. If it's a set of bash scripts that includes AI and the ability to run a tech site, call it CmdrTaco!
How can "crayon" be a trademark or a copyright... It's like saying the word "windows" is a trademark... oh wait.
Crayon, much like any other word can be trademarked for a specific use (like Apple). Check out Tess (see link below) and do a search for Crayon. While you're there, read about trademark laws.
In particular, he uses the regulations of trademark and patent law, because in this area the judical uncertainty is very high."
It always annoys me to see this kind of abuse of the legal system, where over complicated proceedings and legal language makes it too much trouble for companies to fight, and encourages them to just settle. This rewards frivolous suits, instead of punishing them as it should. Sigh.
...are Crayon going to sue the Oxford English Dictionary for using their trademark without
permission inside?
This is crazy , its farcical enough when a company sues over a common word in the own
language that they've decided to trademark (Windows anyone?) but when its *another*
language isn't it about time someone started banging together the heads of trademark lawyers???
Crayon(c) is a french word(c). I dont get it, why is there company(c) that have the right to copyrights some words(c) that existed for hundreds of years.
Crayon is pretty much in that state. A "crayon drawing" is a drawing made with the application of coloured wax sticks. It does NOT require the use of wax sticks from a specific company. If a person draws something in crayon, again, it does not mean they went out and selected a specific brand of wax drawing implement.
From that, SuSE should have been able to contend that "crayon", as pertains to anything other than wax sticks, has entered the public domain. As such, it can no longer be subject to trademark suits for anything other than attempts to directly clone the original product and sell that product under false pretenses.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
That is almost as bad as "windows". and "word". and lets not forget "office".
Crayon Vertriebs has announced that to inhibit any future potential dilution of market value of their brand "Crayon", they intend to seek injunctions against the following 22,103 defendants:
Arayon 49 hits.
Brayon 463 hits.
Drayon 285 hits.
Erayon 30 hits.
Frayon 100 hits.
Grayon 547 hits.
Hrayon 2 hits.
Irayon 20 hits.
Jrayon 22 hits.
Krayon 12300 hits.
Lrayon 5 hits.
Mrayon 8 hits.
Nrayon 5 hits.
Orayon 56 hits.
Prayon 2750 hits.
Rrayon 4770 hits.
Srayon 52 hits.
Trayon 603 hits.
Urayon 2 hits.
Vrayon 5 hits.
Xrayon 17 hits.
Yrayon 10 hits.
Zrayon 2 hits.
At this time Crayon Vertriebs has not named any defendants using Qrayon 0 hits, Wrayon 0 hits, or rayon 467,000 hits. Crayon Vertriebs reserves the right to name additional defendants in the future.
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
No. Gravenreuth (the lawyer) has never worked for M$ AFAIK. But law suits like this one are very common in germany :-(
An example: we have here a small company Symicron GmbH (point at the link "Unsere Produkte"), which has a trademark for "explorer". The lawyer of that company is Gravenreuth, and there have been a couple of suits against several individuals and companies, mostly because they made links on their web sites to software like ftp explorer or distributed it somehow. (Fortunately Gravenreuth has lost most of these cases.)
M$ Germany has an agreement with Symicron about using "explorer" for their windows exploder, and that is the only reason why they didn't meet Gravenreuth at the court.
Gravenreuth is really a very ugly person and has no friends, but that doesn't mean he works for M$ :-)
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't this the same guy who was bullied a few months ago over the name Killustrator by Adobe?
The concept of trademarking common english is dubious at best and completely retarded at worst. Trademarks should be limited to unique LOGOS - not words. One simple test: "Can I find this word in a dictionary?" If so, no trademark should be granted on it. There is a big difference between "Floor, Dog, Architect, Illustrator" and "Coca-Cola, the Taste of a new Generation".
Although this is more or less good news, I've been wondering why the majority of SuSE news posted is negative (e.g. New Financing And Fewer Staff @ SuSE, IBM And Intel Help Rescue SuSE From Insolvency, SuSE Announces More Layoffs, SuSE Lays Off (Most) U.S. Staff (Updated)), while releases 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 of their distro have been ignored. Check it out. I know at least one person submitted the 7.2 and 7.3 releases.
There are a list of active trademarks used generically as well as a list of defunct ones here: http://rinkworks.com/words/eponyms.shtml Hmmm... I never knew "Aspirin" was a trademark.
Basically they said they could care less and that the lawsuit brought on their behalf was done so unknowingly to them. In Germany anybody can sue on behalf of someone else in cases of trademark violations even if that party has no connection with the trademark holder. To top that off the bar for preliminary injunctions is much lower than that in other countries.
with partnership with B® and C® have formed® a new ecommerce company whose vision is to bring whatever to wherever all around® the planet with unlimited® capacity. This meld®ing of giants has the new and original name of D®
Our business plan is generate revenue by suing anyone and® everything that has violated® our cherished® and world® reconigzed® trad®emark.
For example the online forum Slashd®ot. If you will notice the third® from last letter you will see our trad®emark is once again used® without out our consent and you can be sure our lawyers are stand®ing by to d®ishout our creamy brand® of messed® up justice on the bagel that is the internet.
Once we have generated® enough revenue we will commence with bringing unlimited® broad®band® access that is afford®able to everyone, be they eskimo or aborigine. Although I will ad®mit we haven't a clue how we're going to pull it off.
D® and d® are registared® trad®emarks of D® Ecommerece®. B® and C® are registared® trad®emarks used with permission. Any other letter of the english alphabet that is owned® by another company we are a small startup and it isn't worth it to come after us.
>
Find a victim
Go to a court and demand preliminary injunction. It's not really important that you have grounds for that, you only have to convince a judge
A mass-cease and desist mailing (with hefty lawyerly costs attached) is an alternative approach
Offer entity suffering from the injunction that for a low, low service charge the injunction could be lifted
Find new victim and repeat ad nauseum
That's not to say that I condonce such behavior. It's pretty much a rip-off scheme comparable with what some US ambulance chasers do by suing companies on a grondless basis. But as long some German laws are pretty rediculous*), this will not stop.
The Reg has it in more detail.
*)For example, C&A offered customers a 20% discount in the first week of the Euro intorduction, if they didn't pay cash. A court prohibit that, even though the rebate laws in Germany where relaxed a while ago. If a competitor (or anybody for that matter) doesn't like what you're doing, they get you on grounds of "unfair competition" laws, nowadays.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Well, Microsoft doesn't know what they're missing.LOL It's hard to believe people like that exist. Phew!!! This renews my lake of faith in "the Law" ...
Rien n'est plus beau que le creux du 0.
no one can say Gravenreuth is a moron...
The part I don't understand about this whole saga is why SuSE? It's not "their" application, it's just in their distribution. Hell, thechnically, they aren't even selling it (they can't because of the GPL). They are just putting it on a CD and in a box for us. What about RedHat or Mandrake? Are they goning to have to brave these same elements?
:-\
Now, I understand that RH and MDK are not German companies and would be out of Crayon's "jurisdiction". Sooooo... what then about KDE? Granted KDE isn't a real "company", nor all all the hackers that are apart of KDE residing in Germany, but KDE is indeed (losely) based in Germany. Are they going to have to change it's name AGAIN?
P.S. Sorry for bad spelling, I haven't had coffee yet...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Someone, which calls itself CRAYON, not actually uses the business success and/or the name of Cray?
Shouldn't we anmailen there CRAY? * gggg *
Who sends a warning now to Crayon because of copyright injury at Tom&Jerry to only prevent in order that those sometime times these figures on their CD's burn.
Protection money blackmailers work similarly.
Otherwise i would not have known what you were talking about. since you linked to it though iw as able to find it onthe web.
Thanks!!!!!!!!!
PS: You suck.
Perhaps rather it shit that (OpenSource) Community Crayon bankruptcy makes...
F.v.G. lives on its (profesionell) bad reputation...
Also, SuSE certainly does sell SuSE. They can't prevent other people from copying/selling/whatever the GPL'ed parts of the distribution, but there is no restriction in GPL about selling GPLed software, in fact it is explicitly permitted.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
There SuSE has however again luck had...
I believe however that from now on will watch out more exactly, what also in the Distri comes. And being illusory light not only SuSE, but also some other one in this area.
Maybe that's why there is no CMYK in the Gimp
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
.... a so large attention in the Oeffentlickeit....
Now it would not have thought at all that the discussion carries fruits. Nevertheless is it unfortunate that no precedent came here against the grassierenden mischief regarding marks.
This lawyer has some reputation in germany. If you want to tell him, what you think about persons like him... or if you need more information look at http://www.gravenreuth.de or mailto mail@gravenreuth.de feel free to make his mailserver glow :-)
Do not watch out so exactly that somebody means a hair in the soup to find (seen mark legal) can normal humans not at all.
If I all the megabytes at documentation (the individual programs) in the distributions do not think am it nevertheless at all possible as Distributor all this on alleged trademark law injuries to be examined.
Times completely apart from it which I do not see a danger of mistake zwichen Krayon and Crayon.
I just have to shake my head at what people try to sue over. Lindows and Windows was dumb enough, Crayon and Krayon was even dumber. What's next, is Cray going to sue Crayola Crayon next???
rm -r windows
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
NO COMMENT
Moin!
Now the time came to striking back against this bad resident of Munich Abmahnabzocker and this small Klit.
Now one could strike Gravenreuth and this juice shop with the own weapons. Because "Crayon" hurts completely obviously the mark "Cray" of the US company "Cray Inc.." and is in addition a deception. Exactly the same as "Ftp Explorer" the mark "Explorer" and "triton" the mark "Tricon" hurts.
One must find only someone, which obtains EVs against Crayon. I think there of a member from the FFL...
Perhaps Cray computer should sue crayon for dilution of their trademark.
--McFly
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
my son and dog chews (not eschews) crayons
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
You are kidding, but these people actually do something like that, and expect revenue from it[maybe get it, too]. They also (according to The Reg) invest part of their revenue in more patents, to have more litigation material.
Ciao
----
FB
Since the US justice persistently ignores theyer part of international law enforcment contracts and does not allow processes against US companies being brought before a juge in the country where the delict took place, in contrast to european companies, who have to defend themselves against ridiculous US laws even though the "delicts" happened outside of the US.
Well... The products are more like collections of comic art, 3D art cliparts and stuff like that. They don't claim to make state-of-the-art software. Maybe they have coded a own proprietary viewer, but their main stream of revenue is in the graphic collection stuff.
+++ath0
I don't understand how the word "Crayon" can be patented.
What else do you call the things that multiple companies sell? Color-Applicating-Wax-Sticks?
Crayons are made by Crayola. Now, if they called the program Crayola or *possibly* Krayola, then I can see an issue (maybe). But the generic term Crayon?
I find myself responding to so much ignorance and stupidity in this discussion that I am going to put everything in one post and use small words to make it easy on all of you. First off, trademark laws differ from country to country. I am going to discuss US trademark laws not because they are the laws in this case but because they clarify some misconceptions in general. From the US Patent Office - A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination of words, phrases, symbols or designs, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others. In other words, Oracle has a trademark on the word Oracle (which is a real word) for computer software and database design for others (as well as other things). They have exclusive right to create a software product with the name Oracle. Fedmet Resources Corporation also has a trademark on the word Oracle. Their trademark is for refractory or ceramic brick. You can see that few people would confuse an Oracle database with a brick (no comment). So a company doesn't "own" a word by trademarking it. They reserver the right to sell particular products with that word as its name. I hope this clarifies things for some people.
there will be lawyers and people looking to rake it in. I have a friend who works at a law firm as a paralegal. Her job is to read as much as possible (trade journals/on-line mags/discussion groups) and look for possible revenue streams. If she finds something interesting (interesting does NOT imply use of common sense) she passes it on to a pool of lawyers who dig a bit deeper.
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
The German company "Crayon" probably decided that SuSE was small-potatos and that there are other companies that might have more money to extort.
To think that I thought that the US had the worst Tort system.
"...app called Krayon, listed in the start menu but no longer supplied..."
The what menu now??
(I know, I know, off topic, blah, blah - sue me.)
sic transit gloria mundi
according to the fine folks at merriam-webster (www.m-w.com), the word 'crayon' dates back to 1644. I agree that you shouldn't make a product with a name that is similar to an already exiting product with similar functionality. however, there should exceptions when companies name their products after simple, centuries-old words (crayon, draw, windows, paint, painter, illustrator, write, word) in the first place.
Also, is it just me, or is it strange that the two biggest offenders when it comes to uncreative names are when companies make *writing* and *artistic* programs? I could forgive a math-geek for being too left-brained to come up with anything more creative than "Math", but c'mon... Draw? Word? Sheesh. Maybe we should just go to funtctionality:paltform names, like WordProcessor:Win32 or RasterArt:Mac.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I think the lesson here is two-fold.
First, companies will leech money from superior sources in any manner they can. If you can't beat them, sue them. Sue them for being named similarly. Hell, next we'll see Microsoft sue Stallman because Emacs can be used for editing text, same as Word.. A clear violation, and interference in Microsoft's Freedom to Compete.. For them, it's a drop in the bucket, for a small company defending against such idiocy, is bankrupcy.
Second part of the lesson? Hackers, don't be so fucking clever with your program names.. Don't call it Krayon if it's anything even remotely similar to Crayon. Don't call it Killustrator if it's an Illustrator work-alike. Don't call it Gnutella if it smells like chocolate and hazelnuts.
Yes, in principle, naming cleverness is a form of expression and should be protected by the Freedom of Speach (which BTW only applies in the US, and even there it's a very iffy thing lately)..
In practice, unless you have money to burn on 'standing up for your principles' in court, name it something else; something that won't give rich companies an excuse to sue.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
IANAL
The German company Crayon doesn't make crayons. The word crayon when referring to crayons is a generic term. Crayola crayons are trademarked.
Trademark law frequently permits trademarking generic terms when they refer to unusual uses of those terms. As an example, think of Microsoft Windows. Even if trademark law didn't permit such trademarking, the German word for crayon isn't "crayon"--it's "zeichenstift" according to babelfish. I'm sure there are US companies that have trademarked words that would be generic in other languages, so it should stand to reason that German law permits trademarking of foreign words that would be generic in their native languages.
Unfortunately, the real problem seems to be with the German court system permitting potentially-disastrous injunctions to be granted on the flimsiest of evidence or without real justification. The German company Crayon should be required to show that failure to grant the injunction would result in serious and irreparable harm before being granted the injunction. It's clear that the injunction was granted on flimsy grounds and shouldn't have been granted in the first place.
Maybe so. But the naming issue seems to be a symptom of a bigger problem. Why does the Linux community value copying existing products--down to similar product names--instead of trying something new?
We got a good report from Macworld on /. where we were told Apple continues to blaze new trails. Where are the new killer apps on Linux? The Linux community seems content to copy existing apps and names, and thus can only claim "Freer" instead of also "innovative".
Lies about crimes
Gravenreuth is a moron. There, I said it, but that doesn't make it true.LOL ...or false.
Rien n'est plus beau que le creux du 0.
"a German company called "Crayon" that claims that the KDE app Krayon violates their trademark."
If only Seymor was still around to first claim prior art and then sue for them violating the trademarks on the power buttons for his super computers.
Time to shoot all lawyers, corporate suits, tradermark and patent clerks.
Come to think of it, time to shoot all Americans, Brits, Germans and French. Oh, and Canadians.
At least.
jd apparently does not understand that trademarks protect adjectives, not nouns. "Crayon" is not a generic name for a certain type of computer program: the trademark holder has a trademark for a computer program named Crayon, not for the word Crayon. If Suse tried to contend that "crayon" as the name of a computer program has entered the public domain, they would be laughed out of court. The concept you're confused about has to do with, say, Kleenex becoming a generic name for a facial tissue ("a kleenex"). This concept has gotten confused further by the DNS issues: before the domain name fights, it was clearer that you can't own a word, only certain applications of that word ("apple" as the name of a computer is owned by one company, "apple" as the name of a record company by another).
People need to know that if you write a clone of a program, and the program's name is not a generic name for the type of program in question (like "graph" for a graphing program), it's not legitimate to name your program just by putting a K or a G in front of the other program's name. So, "killustrator" would be a clear loser if ever taken to court, because even though Illustrator is a word, it is not a generic term describing a vector-graphics drawing program, and furthermore it will be easy to show that the name is not a coincidence, that the namer intends to suggest a relationship between the two programs.
Similarly, the FSF might well have a case against a proprietary program that uses GNU in its name: even though it hasn't formerly registered GNU, it's been using it as a mark for a long time in business (the FSF sells CDs, tapes, etc) and it is a widely recognized and respected name.
Now I can go out and buy that $80 proprietary linux distro I've always wanted...
crayon is the french word for pen. I thought normal words were not able to be trademarked. Even though it is in another language, it's still a normal word.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
I fail to see how a word like Crayon could possibly be a legal trademark that disallows someone from using "Krayon." Will they sue Crayola next?
I'm expecting my trademark on "pencil" any day now!
Tommorow I think I'll apply for a trademark on the letter e.
That's how I've always heard it explained. I was confused about it back around the time that I was 12, and was told at that time that words couldn't be trademarked to mean anything like what they really meant. So Crayolla was trademarked, and crayon was just was a crayon was. Then I asked about Kleenex(tm) (or did I ask about kleenex?).
I'd never even heard the term facial tissue.
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Surely crayon et al. should be obliged to
take every other distribution to court as well.
Failure to do so is hypocrasy, and should
be used as grounds to nullify previous case/s
I'm no laywer, but things like this are just ridiculous
Crayon is a one man company by the same guy who has a small shop here in my town, called "Seidel Softwareservice". I once bought a mouse and keyboard there. I thought he was was a nice guy, but that lawyer Gravenreuth is a leech and belongs to the lowest scum. He's been pulling these schemes for years.