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Imminent Mandrake Name Change?
An anonymous reader writes "Mandrakesoft has lost a trial
and has been condemned to change its name and its logo"
The article is in French, but it says that King Syndicates owns a trademark on Mandrake the Magician.
Update MandrakeSoft can use the logo during appeals, which may take up to 3 years. You can now read their official statement on the ruling.
Ok, who the heck is Mandrake the magician? Has anyone even heard of him? Enlighten me someone please!
Oh, and please please please don't let "Mandrake" change name to "Man--"....
I thought copyrights usually only worked if the two items were in the same field. How is anyone going to get Mandrake Linux confused with some crappy comic strip magician?
Does Mandrakesoft's logo (a flying star) have anything to do with this magician guy?
----dragon!
;)
Afterall, a "drake" is a man-dragon to begin with, eh? Removes a little redundancy.
How about 'mandragora' as a replacement for 'mandrake'? According to dictionary.com, mandragora is the Old English version of mandrake. A Google search for "Mandragora the Magician" returned no hits, so it should be safe.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Bringing up Mozilla is interesting. It's a great error that Mandrake can lose a lawsuit over naming themselves after a plant because of a totally unrelated cartoon character that nobody cares about anymore which just happens to be named after the same plant, but Mozilla is powerless to do anything about the computer application "Popzilla" which is clearly trying to capitalize on Mozilla's success by creating confusion in the marketplace.
Mandrake is a generic word like Windows. It is a kind of plant.
I'm not sure about France and IANAL, but when I looked at trademarks late last year for a UK or an EU trademark you had to register it under one or more classes, and the trademark would only protect you against products that also fall under those classes. If a product fell under a different class to one you registered, you were not protected.
Software development fell under class 38 or 42 (can't remember which one).
Java gaming nut - http://www.retep.org/ or for the rail http://uktra.in/
I think it just lends support to the recursive-acronym method of naming projects. ;)
If they'd called themseves GAM (GAM ain't Mandrake) would they be having this problem? Or MIN (Mozilla is MIN)? Yeah I didn't think so.
I am the owner of MobiliX, which is now TuxMobil - Linux On Laptops, NoteBooks, PDAs and Mobile (Cellular) Phones. After I have been charged (see Obelix./.MobiliX case documentation), I became aware of other trademark cases in the Linux world. Actually Linux history seems to be a sequel of trademark charges. Linux itself has been under trademark charges different times. I have documented at least 15 Linux trademark cases. PS: Though I have lost the MobiliX case in court finally, there is still my request to unregister the trademark Obelix, because it is not used in the appropriate classes. So don't give up Mandrake there is always hope.
What happened to the whole thing about Trademarks not infringing across different markets.. A Comic Strip and a Software Company are significantly different markets.. Now if mandrakesoft were to start making a mandrake linux comic strip then the "mandrake the magician" would have something to complain about..
See Mandrake This is like United Syndicates suing Planters for use of the name "Peanuts"!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
"Mandrake" doesn't mean anything in French. The French name of that plant is mandragore (yes, it sounds even more mysterious :-)
:-)
Mandrake the Magician, however, is probably known by anyone aged 25 or over. His stories used to run in the "Journal de Mickey", which as you can guess is the prominent Disney publication here (70 years and counting !).
I can remember whole Mandrake stories. Hey, did you know that Hojo (the Asian cook) was really Inter-Intel's boss ?
Yes, they took the name from the character. No, they do not compete in the same market. But yes, they might have thought a bit more before choosing that name.
Thomas Miconi
This would be great satire if it weren't true:
It's doesn't take a photocopy-like physical resemblance to infringe a trademark. If you intentionally model your mark after identifying characteristics of an existing mark, you're hijacking its goodwill, and you're screwed.