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NetBSD Trademark Application Completed
Daniel de Kok writes "The NetBSD Foundation is proud to announce that it has registered the ``NetBSD®'' trademark. The foundation would like to thank Jay Michaelson (Wasabi Systems) for filing the application and providing answers to the US Patent Office, and Carl Oppedahl (Oppedahl & Larson) for giving advice and keeping the Foundation informed about the process. An official policy on the use of the NetBSD® trademark is currently being drafted and will be made public soon."
"An official policy on the use of the NetBSD® trademark is currently being drafted and will be made public soon" how can you condem them before you even hear there policy on the use of the trademark?
-=Hinkey=-
Actually the cost of a trademark registration is quite reasonable. You can do the discovery and filing for around $1000, possibly less if you do some of the paperwork yourself.
IANAL but I have a few trademarks.
Patents... OTOH cost 10x more to start with, and considerably more after that if you try to defend them.
So a registered trademark is a good investment for a small company that fears competition.
I don't see the immediate benefit to NetBSD, however.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
It's probably taken so long because they didn't want to spend a lot of money on lawyer fees. Cross the right palms with silver, and things happen amazingly quickly. Fail to do so, and they happen amazingly slowly.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Slashdot gets sued for trademark infringement..
hehe
Si.
Linux is also trademarked
(excerpt from that site)
Examples of Use Requiring A License.
On the other hand, if you plan to market a product or offer a service to the public using a mark that identifies the LINUX based product under a name that you consider your product name, like "Super Dooper Linux" or "Real Time Linux Consultants" you are required to apply for and obtain the low cost one time royalty license described elsewhere on this web site. This is true whether you actually apply for a trademark for your product or service name, because you are using the mark in a trademark sense, and it is important that the public know that LINUX is the base mark owned by Linus, and that the derivative mark you have adopted is your particular version of Linux.
Beside our need to protect the Linux mark for all of us in the industry, this process allows us to prevent improper uses of the mark that might eventually result in someone obtaining a trademark with the word Linux in it that suggests that they are the sole source of Linux or the sole authority to certify some aspects of use or training concerning Linux. For this reason we have refused to license marks like "Linux University" or "The Linux Certification Board."
(end-excerpt)
It's pretty reasonable for NetBSD to want the same protection from dillution for it's valuable brandname. And it's hardly the first open source OS to get it's name trademarked.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Acquiring such a trademark means that it is somewhat easier to enforce that others do not use the trademark in their own product names.
..understaffed and underqualified. There's probably loads of prior art. I bet there are everything from cereals to tampons already called NetBSD. You mark my words!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
around $1000, possibly less if you do some of the paperwork yourself
But the orignal post is quite right- in this case it must have cost a comparative fortune. Looking at the prosecution history, you can see two office actions and an appeal. I'm not sure "DIY" is even in the ballpark for non-lawyer IP professionals (let alone the average guy) in such circumstances.
There's some additional prosecution history here if you're curious. Gotta say, the approach to get around the objections based on registrations for BSD and FREEBSD (see the 11/26/02 doc) is pretty interesting, and certainly emphasizes that getting a NETBSD registration required a fair amount of work/resources.
Saves on having to hunt down and kill the jerk that forks NetBSD and calls it NetBSD. This would have saved a lot of hell with MySQL.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I think that I am going to rush out and trademark "BSD Is Dying", that way I prevent usage of that term on troll /. posts! Patent office, here I come!
Damn®. Being Politically Correct®" and using all those Godawful Stupid Symbols® is F**king Irritating®.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
Is NetBSD a registered non- or not-for- profit organization? If so, who is to say they didn't get some of the work pro-bono as a tax write off? Offer many hours free in exchange for repayment of real out of pocket expenses and write the rest off as donation to a non-profit.
Organizations like these have many friends in many places. Who is to say a spouse or friend of a NetBSD developer/PR person didn't write some of these documents in their spare time? Friend of mine traded some internet access and good social engineering for a few hours of lawyer time to draw up some TOS and 1year contracts for the wireless internet he was going to sell to his neighbors.