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Apple Sued Over Unix Trademark
Jerrry writes "CNET News reports The Open Group is suing Apple over unlicensed use of the Unix trademark, after Apple used the term in conjunction with its Mac OS X marketing. Apple, meanwhile, is countersuing to have the Unix trademark declared invalid because the term has become generic."
A/UX was Apple's first try at a Unix operating system and was based on System V Release 2.2. But that wasn't where Apple stopped. They added custom extensions from Releases 3 and 4, and the networking and filesystem were from 4.2/4.3BSD. The GUI was System 7.0.1 (for A/UX 3.0.1, the version I use) and Apple's own version of the X Window System called MacX. I would say that this is Unix.
Another example (closer to Mac OS X) is NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP. This OS uses the Mach kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University with major contributions from Avie Tevanian. This Kernel had no natural interface, so to stay with standards, BSD was used as an interface layer (specifically 4.3BSD was licensed to be used). For a GUI, NeXT developed their own application environment (that would one day become Cocoa) and used Adobe's Display Postscript as the display engine (which Apple would replace after Rhapsody with Quartz, which used Apple's Display PDF in place of Display Postscript). There was no version of X Windows shipped with NeXT systems, but a number of people made versions for NeXT systems (much like people are doing today for Mac OS X). I would say that this is Unix.
I, personally, have a hard time not considering anything that uses either System V or BSD to be Unix. These have been the pillars of this OS, and when not used have been the models for other operating systems. I would not consider POSIX to be a good way to judge a system as being Unix because Windows NT 4.0 was POSIX compliant and it is not Unix.
There is no god
I agree. FreeBSD is *genetic* Unix, and that is the sense in which Apple is using the term Unix. I don't think Apple is trying to claim that OS X is a certified Unix.
OS X is based on FreeBSD, which is genetic Unix, hence OS X is also genetic Unix.
My journal has hot
Trademarks are registered for different categories of trade. i.e. I can trademark Apple as a new type of car and this is just fine. I could also create a new fruit drink called Unix or a toilet papaer brand called SCO with no trademark problems.
According to their web pages, NetBSD and OpenBSD are "UNIX-like operating system[s]", and FreeBSD is "derived from BSD UNIX". Since parts of OSX are from FreeBSD, I could see why they can say Unix-based.
I commend them for taking it to court instead of settling, but surely they should have known that the *BSDs started because of these same issues with the Unix owners. I wonder why they stepped into this minefield.
Definately. They are sending money Amazon's way for 1 click shopping which is questionable at best ..
As per the following link Apple is clearly using the UNIX trademark to their advantage to SELL their product.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/jaguar/unix.html
I borrowed the term "genetic Unix" (that was not I typo -- I did not mean "generic Unix") from ESR, which he coined in the OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs-IBM Complaint.
My journal has hot
Eric Raymond doesn't own the word "open" any more than Richard Stallman has the right to go around insisting that people are using the word "free" incorrectly. Let them invent their own words.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Sir, inform thyself. The Open Group has no relationship at all to Linux. In fact, at one point they were the proprietors of the X source code, and they were going to close that code, leaving only XFree86 to maintain an open X Window System codebase. (Thankfully, that didn't happen.) They're no special friends of the Linux or *BSD communities, suffice to say. They own the UNIX trademark, and they'll beat you bloody with it.
That said, I'm surprised I hadn't heard something about this earlier. I wondered many times when The Open Group was going to start in on Apple for calling OS X "UNIX", when they don't even let the free *BSD variants and Linux use the name.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Neither Linux nor the BSDs infringe upon this trademark, and of course the Open Group has made significant contributions to the Linux Standard Base (about 95% of the test-suite software, I'm told) and has been working on an Open Source Strategy with me since last year. You'll like it. It's in internal review now.
If you would like to send a message to the Open Group, I would not be a bad intermediary to use. Please write to me at bruce @ perens.com . I am on the road right now and will not be able to engage in a long debate on Slashdot, so email will be best.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Apple, if anybody, knows about trademarked terms:
1) Apple Corps. and the lawsuit with the Beatles publishing company over the music biz thing. This could rear its head back up in coming months because of iTMS
2) Firewire. Apple MADE firewire, but because they refused to let anybody use firewire as the name of the device all these odd names like IEEE1394, i.Link, and others crowded the market. Later on Apple wised up and said that Firewire was so generic now that anybody can use it to describe IEEE1394 devices.
I see a story at osopinion about Apple's use of the Unix trademark. This has been stewing for a while, but back then it did not look like it would come to a law suit. In fact at the end of the story there is an update that indicated that Apple was getting closer to the Open Group.
Lee Joramo
The OpenGroup (which used to be X/Open) is a nonprofit, like the FSF, which owns the trademark and licenses it when a system has successfully passed a compatibility test. The notion is that any UNIX should be (at least approximately) compatible. I'm not at all sure if Linux could pass, since it has, eg, a rename(2) system call in place of unlink. The money that OpenGroup gets is used to continue their standards operation. See
This press release on the UNIX trademark and SCO
this one on testing and certification.
What the OpenGroup doesn't do is support open source per se -- unlike GPL'ed code, you can be OpenGroup certified and still be closed source. Bad bad OpenGroup, they're not RMS-correct.
The story really is poorly reported by not including this information, and the rabid /.'ers posting would do well to have done the minimal amount of research before expressing strong opinions (this is the www...)
In any case the "Unix" certification is one of those check-off items that get used in evaluations so whether or not there's any real value to it there is an effective value. "Unix", "Posix", this-book/that-book compliance; they're common evaluation criteria and having or not having them is very important.
Of course the question is has "Unix" become a generic word like "Crayon" became or is it still specific to a vendor like "Xerox" or "Kleenex". YMMV but it looks like to me T.O.G. may have a point and paying through the nose may be one of Apples costs for the best selling Unix distribution out there.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Funny thing is, Apple is a member of the Open Group.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Xerox retains its trademark for photocopiers, and defends it meticulously. You're thinking of Cellophane and Aspirin, which did lose their traademarks years ago.
sulli
RTFJ.
"Once a trademark is selected, it is important to use it properly. Failure to use a trademark properly can result in loss of the trademark. Ways to lose trademark rights generally fall into three categories. Abandonment occurs when one stops using the mark and has no intent to resume using it. A mark will be lost by actions or failures to take action, that cause the mark to lose its significance. Also, a mark can be lost by becoming *generic* if the public comes to think of a mark as the identity of a particular brand of a product. This is really a subset of actions or inaction causing a mark to lose its significance. For example, some people think that Kleenex brand of facial tissue, Xerox brand photocopy machines, and Band-Aid brand adhesive strips are in danger of falling into this category. "
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The timing and selection of this lawsuit reeks of convenience.
The timing and selection of this comment reeks of not reading the article. This lawsuit was filed in December, 2001.
Nah, that's nowhere near right.
/dev, /bin, /tmp, /var, /usr
An operating system being a unix variant has nothing to do with being text-based or not, since any modern unix in the past decade or so ships with a client/server, network-transparent GUI framework (X11) - while msdos, novell netware and as400, none of which even remotely resemble unix, are all text based.
mr gates claimed some time ago that windoze nt would be a "better unix than unix" but anyone who has compared the two environments would find a marked divergence of cultures, with very little in common between the two.
windoze "nt" owes more to ideas from vms, pc-lan networking and ms-dos than anything else. (Ok, got it? let's do a single-user version of vms, give it an ms-dos prompt and pc-lan networking, slap on a pee cee gui and call it "new technology"! - folks will love it!)
No, unix is a very very different beast from ms windows, vms, as400, novell netware, and other OSes - those who know the unix nature need no explanation.
But, for the newbies, I'll take a swing at it - this is a rough idea:
1. Unix has a multiuser, client/server design
2. In the Unix process model, init is the father of all processes
3. Each process has it's own protected environment
4. New processes creation is via fork, or fork/exec
5. Each process has a process id, a parent process, and a controlling tty
6. Processes become daemons by disconnecting from their controlling tty
7. Job control via nice, signals and foreground/backgrounding facilities
8. Each user has a unique user id and belongs to one or more a groups
9. There is a unique superuser with uid 0, not subject to normal limits.
10 Filesystem characteristics - quotas, hard/soft links, directory files
11 Files - The dir links inodes to filenames, inodes contain all other info
12 Filesystem layout - "/", transparent mount points, no "drive letters".
13 Overall filesystem hierarchy -
14 Generally recognizable as either SysV or BSD
15 nfs is the native file sharing protocol, can also support ipx, pc-lan
16 Generally includes a mail delivery system, c compiler, and debug tools
17 Philosophy of many small tools from which to build big tools
18 Remote multiuser shell access via 'r' commands, telnet, secure shell
19 Remote multiuser GUI access via network transparent X protocol
Apple does this; read any of their ads where they mention UNIX... it says in the bottom, in legal boilerplate (UNIX is a registered trademark of the Open Group..*some other garbage*)
More power to Apple. UNIX's a generic term now. Maybe SCO can die along the way if we get lucky.
the name become a generic phrase for ALL copiers
There are other copiers whose operation doesn't resemble that of a Xerox machine, and they've never been called "xerox". Mimeographs, for example.
What does the word 'Unix' refer to? Servers? An OS? I never heard anyone with a bit of sense refer to ALL OSes as 'Unix.'
It refers, naturally, to all Unices. A group of operating systems providing extremely similar core interfaces. This includes AT&T and Berkeley products named Unix, as well as Solaris, Irix, HPUX, AIX, Xenix, FreeBSD, Darwin (aka MacOS X), Linux, and Minix. Some of the things on that list are UNIX(tm), others (those without backing from a deep-pocketed corporation) are merely Unix (sometimes written *nix, to emphasis the lack of trademark authority).
However, it is technically (not legally) accurate to describe any of them as "Unix", for software purposes. For example, if a program is known to run on Unix, then any recent version of any of those OSs will have a similar chance to let it work (after a recompile).
On a non-Unix OS, like Microsoft(tm) Windows(r), BeOS, or MacOS 9, the odds of the program functioning without conceptual re-arrangement are drastically lower.
Now I have heard people say 'Windows' when referring to an OS.
That's a new one on me. Could you provide an example? Something like "My Mac's Windows is OSX!" prehaps?
Neither was Apple claiming OS X is Unix - I remember very clearly the large metallic graphic in the Apple ads that looked bolted together, the text in them said "UNIX BASED".
So, why isn't The Open Group suing the FreeBSD? I will certainly not state anything of the sort that Apple has oodles of money whereas FreeBSD doesn't (TOG isn't SCO), but it is curious.
-- What I don't have in intelligence, I make up for in a lack thereof.
When BSDI's BSD/386 was first released, they advertised their phone number - 800-ITS-UNIX - implying indirectly that the operating system was a UNIX derivative. Lawsuits ensued, and instead of trying to prove that UNIX was generic, BSDI just changed the phone number to settle on that count. USL defended the trademark.
That round of lawsuits, though, paved the way for freeing the BSD 4.4 Lite code base to be used by *BSD and Linux operating systems to build their products. Acknowledge the efforts of those people (BSDI and the University of California) when you run your free operating system today.
The trademark had been defended in the past, and Apple can either try to defend their use of "Unix" (like it seems they're doing) or side-step the issue (like BSDI). Sure, there's alot of pollution in the press where journalists mistake a free operating systems for a "Unix-based" operating system or use the term "unix" generically, but the current trademark owners might have a leg to stand upon when it comes to corporate advertising of a product. I can't think of any company that advertised an operating system as "Unix" and got away with it.
Frankly, the term "Unix" has as much stigma to it (expensive, incompatable, hard to administer, not Microsoft) as it does positive (stability, scalability, not Microsoft). Apple could do without using "Unix" in its advertising and continue to market the operating system on its own merits. To fight for use of the "Unix" trademark seems to me to be waste of shareholder money. Is the benefit to Apple worth the expense of fighting the lawsuit?
IANAL; YMMV; yadda yadda yadda
-ez
(*) "Unix" is a trademark of <insert company du jour>.
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
OSX is NOT UNIX. It is a proprietary OS, which has some Unix-like properties but is not UNIX by any means. Besides, FreeBSD does not claim it is UNIX, just that it's derived from one.
FYI: Mac OS X's core (darwin) is dirrived from FreeBSD therefore, it must be direived from a UNIX.
for a more visual look at it, see the Unix timeline. on the timeline you can trace Mac OS X all the way back to the 1st AT&T release of UNICS. (not a typo)
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
1) Apple Corps. and the lawsuit with the Beatles publishing company over the music biz thing. This could rear its head back up in coming months because of iTMS
FUD!
How many times do we have to go over this! This deal was bought out 10-15 YEARS AGO. It no longer matters AT ALL! It will not rear it's head, because it no longer has one.
This is not always true. Some brands are so powerful that their owners can, in fact, prevent you from registering that mark for another trade. You could not, for example, make Coca-Cola toliet paper, as the public might then become confused as to the manufacturer.
Funny you should bring that up since Apple computer vs Apple Records is the case that decided that :)
I believe the exact phrase used by Apple is "Unix underpinnings." From what I understand of Darwin this is correct, so would be the phrase Unix texhnology. Apple used Unix technology in making OS X. I don't see where this is inaccurate.
Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.
I think you missed the biggy: the concept that everything (almost) is a file, and (especially) that a file is just a sequence of bytes.
This is probably so "intuitively obvious" and widely copied that today it's about as obvious as water is to a fish, but think back to the OS's of UNIX's early days, particularly mainframe OS's that had a gazillion different file types and access methods and you had to pick the right access method to open the file with. (Kind of like DOS's binary and text files, only worse.)
Some of the other stuff you mention is also significant, but a some of it is rather "Johnny come lately" as far as most of Unix's history goes.
-- Alastair
The name Open Group came around the time commercial Unix vendors were talking about Open Standards . It was before esr coined the term Open Source
By Open Standards, they were describing royalty free specifications and interoperability, But nothing about free redistribution. By proprietary, they meant non-published standards or ones with royalties attached, not access to source code. The plan was a base level interoperability and then their own set of features as a market differentiator.
This time period was referred to as The Unix Wars.
The Open Group has only had the say in what was called Unix for a very short time in the history of the Unix operating system.
Of course, since their inception as the Open Software Foundation. Well before they had rights to the Unix name, their desire was to have people think of Unix based on how something worked and interoperated, not on the history of the source code behind it. If it acted like Unix, it was Unix, even if it was called OSF/1.
Actually, Apple would have little trouble getting it certified.
The userland is pretty much a cross between FreeBSD and NeXTStep, both of which are genetic Unix's (And I mean derived from their codebases, not just emulated)
And it performs just like Unix, and uses little GNU code apart from the compiler, and a few utilities not available from NeXTStep or BSD development. The major difference from most (but not all) Unixes is the use of Aqua instead of X, and that's not even unique (both NeXTStep and SunOS shipped with Non-X windowing systems)
Apple also never claimed it was UNIX Certified.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
As a long time user of unix and it's lookalikes...
I can tell you the exactl legal meanings of Unix(tm) and whatnot, as best I understand them, and I can tell you the history of Unix, and how the different versions developed, as best I understand them... but really, when I ask if something is Unix or not, or someone says something is Unix, I don't give two shits what the Open Group says about it. For two reasons.
Firstly , because once I had to use Unixware (It was Novell Unixware at the time). If that's real unix, I'll avoid it thanks.
Secondly, it's because unix in normal use just means "something people often call unix, regardless of whether that is correct or not." I realize that definition is cyclic, but you get the idea.
It doesn't serve any practical reason to me; I don't particularly care about the Open Group.
The leading Unix-type systems out there from my perspective are, in no particular order:
Linux
FreeBSD
Solaris
And the rest, I couldn't care less. I mean, the more the merrier, but these are the only real contenders. I'm not saying the rest are dying or anything, but these are the big players that drive the Unix world.
If the trademark goes away, that doesn't change what Unix means, it just brings the trademark situation in line with reality. The unix world defines itself.
(Please no flames about the other great unix projects.. I know that there are lots who think OpenBSD is the Final Solution for firewalls (it's not, come back when it does policy routing) and lots who woudl rightly say NetBSD is responsible for the rest staying as good as they are (and they are right)
Could this be because of AU/X and not OS X?
AU/X was Apples first try at Unix on the mac and I belive this was an official Unix.
UNIX means all the operating systems certified to be Unix, even in common use of the word. This includes AIX, Solaris, IRIX and HP-UX and excludes BSD, Linux, OSX, minix and Xenix.
No go about the net looking for software ports. Some are available for UNIX ports, most frequently Solaris on sparc. In many places youd see Unix parallel to Linux as a selection, and you will rarely hear a geek say hes using Unix at home, while hes using FreeBSD or Gentoo.
Apple is in the wrong and might lose the case. OSX, like BeOS has great merits and has stood under its own name well. Theres a whole community of Darwin users, feeding on the leftovers of OSX, so OS-X is a known and used term. Forcing Unix's meaning here will result in failure, regardless of what we believe Unix SHOULD mean.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Novell owns the patents and most (probably all) of the copyrights. Some part(s) of The SCO Group might own some copyrights and does own distribution rights. Microsoft probably have some rights to Xenix tucked away somewhere for a rainy day. The Open Group owns the name and concept (and - my goodness - hasn't Unix become a valuable property all of a sudden?). IBM have some rights "in perpetuity", Sun and Lindows have leased some rights. It's getting pretty popular...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
It doesn't even apply to computers anymore...
It can refer to diapers, tupperware, fire-extinguisher, modular book shelving, ball-point pens, towel drying rack, antifog thinner, a TV antennae, a massage tool, eyeglass products, security cameras, an auto-parts trading company, a rental van, a furniture store, a dance bar, a fabric store
or a Korean Metal company...
it's also a hair salon,
and finally, it's a product for fungal diseases of wheat and barley... "There are those who take risks, and those who take UNIX."
- passion
Apple's labeling of Darwin as "Unix" is neither:
misleads consumers.
creates confusion with other products
I have to disagree with you. Although I think Apple has a fabulous product, it clearly is not "Unix". Products that are "Unix" pretty much have one of two characteristics:
1. Built from a cut of the original Unix code base.
2. Pass the Single Unix Specification (1170) or a newer incarnation.
As far as I know, MacOS X qualifies under neither standard.
MacOS X is a great product, but it is clearly "Unix like" as opposed to A/UX, Apple's System V R2.2 Unix with BSD extensions, may it rest is peace.
Mislabeling MacOS X, or any other operating system, as Unix clearly confuses issues, such as how easy it will be to move applications from one platform to another, and the way the operating system behaves.
Commercial "Unix" has by and large been System V since the 80s. The BSD derivatives (like MacOS X) are at a disadvantage in meeting the current Single Unix Specification given the divergence between BSD and SysV. This issue goes back for quite a ways since the power over the licensing of the Unix code and the Unix name have followed the System V code, not BSD.
The current definition of Unix is in a sense both more strict and more flexible. Since a cut of the Unix source originating from AT&T is no longer necessary, more operating systems could qualify as "Unix", but the Single Unix Specification is fairly detailed so it wouldn't be trivial to pass the test. The Single Unix Specification has been a good thing since it is working to make the commercial System V unixes (AIX, HP/UX, Solaris, Digital Unix, etc.) more compatible.
As far as qualifying for the "Unix" label goes, Linux is considerably better off from a starting position if Linus wanted it to be "Unix". Unfortunately for Linux, Linus believes that certain POSIX standards are stupid and doesn't feel bound to stay compatible.
Although the standards for Unix are clearly defined and available, GNU, the Linux community, and the BSDs often feel no need to converge on the standard. To my mind a fair amount of the work of the Linux Standards Base is pointless. The Linux community could just adopt the 1170 specifications, but instead, like so many things, the Linux community is rolling its own instead of going with an established standard when one exists.
There is a trade-off between standards and massive innovation. Linux, *BSD, and MacOS are nothing if not innovative. But if the builders of these systems don't want to adhere existing standards then they shouldn't be whining when they are properly referred to as "Unix like" instead of Unix.
Frankly, if being called Unix is important to the "Unix like" communities, then they should consider doing what Sun does with Solaris. The behavior of a Sun in userland is highly variable depending upon your path. It can behave with: traditional Sun SystemV behavior, BSD behavior, GNU behavior, or POSIX/1170 behavior.
Frankly, I think it would be a hoot if Apple dusted off the source code for A/UX and layered appropriate parts of it on top of MacOS X.
New and improved MacOS X!! Now with improved POSIX & System V personalities!!
Actually it is. Large parts are derived from FreeBSD, some from OpenBSD, and some from NetBSD. It is also an Open Source operating system. You can download the Darwin source code and do as you please including making up your own OS. It uses the Mach microkernel as does Tru64 Unix. Mac hardware uses OpenFirmware the same as does Sun. The BSDs (Darwin included) are just as much Unix as anything derived from System V.
Considering the above, Apple is clearly in the wrong. To put it another way, a street peddler who sells $25 "Rolex" watches could argue that the Rolex name has become generic, but a $25 watch is going to work like a $25 watch no matter what is written on it.
As I understand it, Firewire is just Apple's branded implementation of the open IEEE1394 standard. This is why everybody's DV cameras can be hooked up to computers (albeit with some variations in the physical connectors).
Similarly, Rendezvous is Apple's branded implementation of the ZEROCONF standards published by the IETF, and should therefore interwork with other implementations once the other OS vendors get off their backside and implement them.
I don't necessarily agree with Apple's position on this one, but I think your criticisms here are factually incorrect.
Trademark law is complicated wrt when a term becomes generic - it is obviously to some extent a matter of opinion.
In general terms though the idea is that if the trade uses the term generically, then it is generic. This is distinct from whether an average end user uses the term generically.
For example, I own a vacuum cleaner, but it isn't a Hoover. I might mention that I am going to hoover the front room, but this doesn't mean that the term is generlc. The distinction is when resellers use the term generically, so if I walk into a shop and there is a big sign saying 'Hoovers' but there are various makes of vacuum cleaner underneath it.
So, in order to stop a trademark becoming generic, the trademark owner has to be consistent with it's efforts to stop the term being used generically. Trademark agents send out plenty of letters each week defending their clients products to avoid this happening.
So in the UNIX case, if I as a programmer use the term UNIX generically, this isn't a problem for the trademark owner, it is when people like Apple start using the term generically that fur flies. If on the other hand other companies have been using the term generically on the web for years without receiving notices from the trademark own telling them to stop, then things become much more interesting, and the term may then be generic.
I would say Apple have a reasonably good case.
Another thing, here in the UK the UNIX mark would be described as a service mark, not a trade mark. It in effect represents a trade bodies stamp of approval of a product complying with a set of rules. In this way service marks can be applied to multiple products (a good example would be 'champagne' which is produced by more than one company).
Unfortunately for Linux, Linus believes that certain POSIX standards are stupid and doesn't feel bound to stay compatible.
Whay are you dragging out a quote from 2000 about Linux not supporting POSIX threads? Linux 2.5 contains support for NPTL, a POSIX-compliant thread library, and has had this since 2002.