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SuSE No Longer Barred From Selling

Posted by Hemos on from the crayola-next dept.

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."

7 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. Do we know what trademark was violated? by javilon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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."
  2. Wonder if Binney&Smith have heard of this... by wowbagger · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  3. Re:Not a huge deal. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
    One has to wonder how it is possible at all that there are still businesses left in Germany while Gravenreuth is still alive. He can strike at any time, for the most silliest reason.

    Come tot think of it, how is it possible that Gravenreuth still lives: hitmen are not that expensive, even in Germany, and if enough computer dealers pooled their money...

  4. SuSE & Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  5. No it's not stupid by CaptainZapp · · Score: 4, Interesting
    ...it's called extortion and is pretty common paractice in Germany. Essentially it works like this:

    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

  6. Why SuSE? by xanadu-xtroot.com · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  7. Re:Summary from ZDNET by Lord+Azrael · · Score: 1, Interesting

    AFAIK we in Germany also had somebody who managed to register "Webspace" as a trademark. Just like Capatain Zapp already stated in a previous post, as a trademark holder you then have to defend your trademark if other people are using that word (even if it is something like Webspace!). So this guy via that notorious Gravenreuth lawyer send mass-mails to hundreds of people who used "webspace" on their homepage and these people all had to pay the costs for that laywer (think it was ~ 600 Euro)

    now we call it "markengrabbing" (trade-mark grabbing) here.

    in a second instance a other court said this is not valid and he lost that trademark again, but that laywer earned quite a few bucks.

    http://www.afs-rechtsanwaelte.de/webspace1.htm
    http://www.markengrabbing.de

    --
    Lord "not Gargamel's Cat!" Azrael