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Who Owns The Linux Trademark?
An anonymous reader writes "In an addendum to the recent noises by Microsoft about Linux, InformationWeek blogger Alexander Wolfe has turned up an interesting list of who owns U.S. trademarks on the word "Linux." Yes, Linus Torvalds does indeed have the trademark as far as software is concerned. But Swiss company Rosch owns "Linux" for use with laundry detergents. Interestingly, both Pogo Linux and United Linux have abandoned their trademarks (Wolfe speculates that's because of Linus's lawyers). But Finite State Machines of New Mexico owns RTLinux and Linux Networx Inc. owns "Linux Supercomputing." You can also read the full list of all 204 Linux trademarks"
Since it is based on a program called "xenix", which was written by Microsoft for the US government.
In the late 1970's Microsoft licensed UNIX source code from AT&T which at the time was not licensing the name UNIX. Therefore Microsoft created the name Xenix. Microsoft did not sell Xenix to end-users but instead licensed the software to software OEMs such as Intel, Tandy, Altos and SCO who then provided a finished version of their own Xenix to the end-users or other customers. SCO introduced its first version of Xenix named SCO Xenix System V for the Intel 8086 and 8088 in 1983. Today SCO Xenix is one of the more commonly used and found versions of Xenix.
Linux was based on Minix. A UnixLite OS designed to run on PCs. However, it was really only a teaching tool. Andrew Tanenbaum repeatedly refused to add the new (legitimate) features the users and even developers asked for. Linus Torvalds set out simply to add functionality to his own version of Minix (the copyright allows use to do so for your own personal use, but you cannot sell or distibute it).
Over time, in adding functionality to Minix, Linus Torvalds found that he had created an entirely new kernel. I was very similar to Minix but used none of the Minix source code. Torvalds had originally called it freax, for "`free' + `freak' + the obligatory `-x'. The operator of the FTP server where Linus' new kernel made its debut didn't like the name and simply called it Linux (Linus + Unix). People seemed to like the name so it stuck.
There are many. many more -- this is only a list of Linux-based trademarks in the United States.
For instance, this list is the one for Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
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Well, I have seen ads for stockings with MicroSoft fibers...
Ignore this signature. By order.
A trademark isn't exclusive right to use a word (or symbol, or other "mark") in every context to represent just anything. Trademarks are justified only by their purpose: to identify a distinct product or service to people in its market. The entire test of a trademark's validity is whether it creates or resolves confusion in the market.
If someone (reasonable) sees a mark, do they think it represents the thing offered in trade, or do they think it represents a competitor?
Trademark law requires that mark registrants "vigorously defend from dilution" their mark: actively find others offering under their registered mark competing products, then instruct the competitor to stop using the mark fraudulently or without authorization. If the mark registrant doesn't "vigorously defend" their mark, the market can become confused, diluting the exclusive meaning of the mark, and the registrant can lose their registration, making it available to the competitor (who's then got the same responsibility, if they reregister it themself).
Reasonable people are expected to distinguish between a computer OS and a soap. The Trademark Office registers marks in specific industries (with a fee for each industry in which it's registered). But courts sometimes have difficult questions in defining distinctions, especially in new industries like software.
Trademark is probably the most reasonable "intellectual property" law in the US. Because it's defined in service of the consumer, to ensure the clear flow of info between the mark holder and the consumer.
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make install -not war
In the United States, there's something called the Trademark Anti-dilution Act, which is sort of a winner-take-all rule for trademarks. It says that if you have a "famous" mark, you can shut down competing users regardles of whether or not they are in the same field. So it's not always true that a trademark is only valid within an industry.
The anti-dilution act is evil and should be repealed in its entirety, but that ain't gonna happen. It has been watered down somewhat by the courts.
Neither would be trademarkable (in the field of computing) because they are so generic.
You could trademark "Computer Biscuits" as a brand of biscuits, or "Biscuit Computers" as a brand of computers, but not descriptive terms like "Biscuits" or "Oat Biscuits" as biscuits, or "Computer" or "Personal Computer" in computing.
erroneous: look me up in a dictionary
Yes, it does matters, indeed. There is no such thing as a "prior art" in trademarks.
- The first to file a trademark is the first to own, no matter if the name has been around for centuries (like the term "Windows" which was used since the original Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart demo to designate an application visual space in a graphical multi-task environment).
- Also, the trademark owner has the obligation to sue ("to enforce it's trademark") otherwise he can loose the trademark and the word may get genericised (Google fighting actively against the "verbing" of it's name to designated the act of searching on the web).
- The only limitation is that a trademark name cannot use some generic name in it's field (You can trademark "Google", because in english similarly sounding "pair of goggles" is an optical device that has nothing to do with online search engines also the similarly sounding "googol" is a mathematical concept. Google is unheard of when speaking of search engine) (As a counter example a "window" is part of a graphical interface. Thus Microsoft has patented combinations of it "Microsoft Windows", "Microsoft Windows Vista", etc... and have a set of painfully long "trademark guidelines" on their website)
- Also, a trademark infringement is considered only when there's an actual conflict between two names, where both could be used to designate similar objects. As said by other
Back to our case :
Yes it is important, because otherwise that means that, some idiotic troll company that has nothing better to do, like, say, SCO, could patent "SCO Linux" or "Linux" for their product and then sue the shit out of other distribution makers or OSS projects for "patent infringement" because the others "Linux" infringe on theirs, and all can be confused because all are in fact names of operating system distributions, and "Linux" isn't a generic term.
By securing "Linux", Linus has avoided such a stupid situation. The fact that other companies has similarly sounding names doesn't pose any problem, because there's no way one could mix "Linux as the OSS kernel and distribution bsed on it" with "Linux the swiss detergent" (although this has been a running joke in a campaign advertising for computing courses here in Switzerland...)
In fact such a situation HAS happened before, and one was featured very recently on
Initially the project started as a AOL client, and AOL simply forced them not to use their name in the project name. Thus the project choose GAIM for name, using the initialism for "AOL Internet Messaging" that AOL wasn't using at that time.
Later, AOL registered "AIM" as a trademark for their own product (which was possible because the usage of "GAIM" wasn't widespread enough... and of course wasn't registered in the first place), and ended up unleashing their lawyers on GAIM because both project had similarly sounding names and designate closely related products (both are clients for internet messaging services).
Thus the Pidgin new name.
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