Slashdot Mirror
Python Trademark At Risk In Europe
mvar writes "A company in the UK is trying to trademark the 'Python' term for all things computing. The Python Software Foundation is asking for help. According to the PSF, they contacted the company in order to settle the matter but 'They blew us off and responded by filing the community trademark application claiming the exclusive right to use "Python" for software, servers, and web services — everywhere in Europe.' They now seek help from the community in several ways: By sending a letter to the EU council if you happen to work on a company that uses the Python programming language, by providing EU-published material regarding the Python language (articles etc) and/or financially supporting the PSF in the upcoming legal battle."
Ignoring lawsuits is bad. Ignoring judgments from lawsuits is even worse.
Minor nitpick: Ignoring unjust laws and lawsuits based upon them is good. It's necessary to ignore laws to function in a police state. Ignoring (or even inviting) unjust judgments is a cornerstone of protesting unjust rule of law. Civil disobedience isn't always bad. Until all laws have mandatory auto-expire time stamps what you say is "bad" just can't always be the case. It's illegal to masturbate in Texas, despite everything being bigger there... Protip: If you don't ignore the possibility of lawsuits you can't write any software thanks to patents. Let's say I sue you for disrespecting the flying spaghetti monster, if you don't ignore the lawsuit you could wind up traveling to a foreign land and getting executed by religious extremists.