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BitTorrent to Sue Over Trademark
joe 155 writes "The people at BitTorrent are to begin to
protect their rights through lawsuits if necessary: "The company will set the lawyers on anyone using the BitTorrent name, and trademark, if they are using it to distribute spyware or adware" They also plan to put into action a system where by people will have to pay a licence fee to use the name in the hope of cutting down on adware distribution."
You didn't quite read the (very short) FA, before chiming in, now did you?
The idea is that they want to avoid that spyware - and adware pushers freeload on BitTorrents trademark.
Man, I'm sure that Mr. Pavlov would really love slashdot. You only oughta say "Patent", or "Lawyer" or "Microsoft" and the dogs go "Yapyapyap!"
Fascinating...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Any reputable client does not contain spyware/adware anyways so this wont matter to the OSS ones
basically the scum that repackage a client and trick people into downloading it (on some trackers) will have a problem...which is great.
screw them, they are scum
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
No, there is no intellectual property law.
There is trademark law. That say you call you produckt xxx and nobody else can call themself xxx. If you would make a movie and call it the "the revenge of bittorent" Bram would let his lawyers loose on you only for the name.
Then there is copyright law. If you would publish a movie in the cinema called "the revenge of bittorent" you would have to sue bittorent users of violating your copyright by distirbuting the movie over the BT network.
There is also patent law, but that is not involved here. (...YET....)
Anyway, the lawyer win.
I don't think so.
A trademark has to identify the origin of a good or service so marked and has to indiciate that the quality of that good or service is consistant with others that bear the same mark.
If the mark, in the minds of the relevant consumers, doesn't distinguish the origin from competitors (e.g. if people think that Google and Yahoo are the same) then the mark can no longer function as a trademark and will suffer from genericide.
It is okay for a mark to be a word in common usage -- e.g. apple the fruit, and Apple for computers -- but not in the field where it is being put to use as a trademark. No one can get a trademark on apple for fruit, but they can use it in totally different fields, which is how we get Apple for computers.
So if you have googol used generically only in mathematics, then that's fine. But when people use it generically to refer to any old search engine, that's when Google stops being a protectable mark. Xerox has been fighting this fight for decades, trying to prevent people from using the word xerox as a noun (for either photocopiers or their output) or a verb (for when you make photocopies on a photocopier). If they stop, or their efforts are shown to have been ineffective, then everyone gets to use the word xerox when referring to their machines.
Just like escalator, elevator, thermos, shredded wheat, trampoline, cellophane, and so on. The public can kill trademarks casually.
Personally, I think that anyone trying to make BitTorrent a mark will have a tough time of it. They've been idle too long.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
That headline really ought to say "BitTorrent to Sue Spyware Makers over Trademark," because as of now about 2/3s of the comments are people saying "BitTorrent is dead because Bram is going to sue uTorrent and BitComet and other legitimate clients! Nooo!" Look, I know this is slashdot and people don't RTFA but you could at least RTF summary. They're only suing scumbags. This is a good thing.
"Wont this just hurt the makers of Free/OSS software?"
No, unless said free/OSS software is adware or spyware.
"The adware people are the ones making money, and as such, can pay the fee."
Software must meet security standards before the vendor is allowed to use the name. Adware and spyware vendors won't be given a license, no matter how much they pay.
This is what the summary stated:
In other words, I don't think this is a RTFA situation, but a RTFS issue.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Trademark is specific to a specific 'trade'. So, actually, I _could_ make a move called 'Revenge of BitTorrent', and that would be fine [0]. I just couldn't make a swarmcast filetransfer application and call _that_ BitTorrent (Or, possible any file transfer application - the edges of a given 'trade' are, as always, a little grey).
Thus, I could quite happily sell a hot beverage called Ford, in a cup of a style that I trademark Mercedes, with a Porchse stirring rod, and there's nothing the car companies can do (unless they have a product within the relevent trade spaces).
Classic example: Apple computer and Apple records.
[0] Well, no trademark infringement. The movie would suck, 'cos I'm real bad at making movies.
"As long as the Software is not using the trade mark BitTorrent within its name, it should not be affected."
and it isn't adware or spyware. That's the whole point of the licensing program... to go after the adware/spyware people. Not the OSS software. Bad guys, not good guys.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.