McDeli's, fine. McDonald's or MacDonald's, no. Show me a restaurant, other than the one or two I've heard of that were using the name BEFORE The Fine Hamburger Company, that is called "MacDonald's" or "McDonald's". You'd also have a problem if you put up "Two Golden Arches" that were confusingly similar to TFHC. You don't have to exactly match the trademarked usage, it just has to be confusingly similar.
McDonald's does claim "McDonald's" as a trademark, btw, just as they claim a whole bunch of other things as trademarks.
You still end up paying for it, in increased price of services that use the roads. Part of what you pay to Amazon goes to FedEx, which pays fuel taxes which pay for the roads, for example. Part of your cost of food is the cost of the fuel which got it to the store, and part of that is the tax which pays for the road.
A kid picks an apple from the tree down the road realy just stole the apple form the owner of the tree if he didn't get permision first.
That's not strictly true. Some/many/most (?) places have laws regarding fruit trees growing over public right-of-way - that it is, in fact, ok to pick fruit from such trees.
Right, the mark in relation to their particular product or service. So a game called RISK is a particular product or service, in the field of games. They aren't claiming "global ownership of a generic term", they are only claiming it in relation to a game.
Sure, Dell is named after its founder. Doesn't help if someone else has the trademark, or the term has become generic. It isn't generic, though, even though it is a "real word". Nor could someone by the name of MacDonald start a restaurant called MacDonald's.
If Ford had allowed the name "Ford" to become generic for "car" (in the same way "Coke" has become generic for "soft drink" in parts of the South), they'd have lost the trademark, name of the founder or not.
And yes, Apple was being sued over Tiger. Not because it isn't a made-up word, though, but because someone else used the word in THEIR trademark, in a related field, as well. Tiger Direct lost, by the way. You'd have had a better argument by pointing out that Apple isn't actually claiming a trademark over Tiger!
Note that there are a lot of cars with trademarked animal names, though. I notice that Apple wasn't sued by Jaguar Cars.
I bet you could find at least one instance of "John's Photoshop" before the program was thus named. And what about Adobe?
You're badly misusing the term "generic" to mean "not a made-up word", and note that even a made up word can become generic, e.g. linoleum, aspirin.
So Apple, the various cat names for Mac OSX (Panther, Jaguar, Tiger), Safari, Photoshop, Adobe, Lotus, Dell, Gateway... those are all invalid trademarks? Right.
Ok, I've done that in a text chat, but I don't recall seeing any + button on the audio or video chat window... I'll look for it next time I call my sister. Can you add while doing a one-way video, or add in a one-way video to a two-way?
However, RISK is not a generic term in the field of board games. And "Risk" can be easily shown to be confusingly similar to RISK that trademark protection would extend to it. The Windows case is diluted precisely because there are things like "X Windows" that already existed.
If the rules have a copyright notice on it, that's exactly what it is doing - copyrighting the text of the rules. There's nothing wrong with that. It isn't claiming copyright protection over any expression of rules with the same effect, only their own words.
No the USPTO administers trademarks. Your understanding of what trademark protects is woefully inadequate. A trademark on a board game clearly extends to computer games. If you created a program for doing insurance statistics and called it "RISK", you wouldn't be infringing. If you based a computer game on insurance companies and called it RISK, you almost certainly would be.
It makes no sense to talk about trademark "only in connection with their version of the game". That's like saying that Ford only has a trademark in connection with their version of a car, but if someone makes a DIFFERENT car, they can call it a Ford as well.
Trademarks apply to areas of commerce. "Games" is one such area. You could make a car, and call it a "Risk Car" (as long as you don't call it a Ford Risk Car). You probably wouldn't sell any with that name, but Hasbro would have a lot of trouble trying to sue you for trademark infringement. Come out with a board game based on your Risk Car, and call it Risk Car Wars, and you probably WOULD lose in a trademark infringement suit (and it wouldn't matter if your game was similar or completely different).
A lawyer is going to be as vague as possible in such a letter - if you choose to stop using more than they have rights to, all the better for them. Since there is one element that is being infringed (the name "RISK"), the letter is not all bullshit. It is annoying, but if he named specific elements, and when it came to trial it turned out that part of the rules were verbatim copied and he hadn't mentioned it in his letter, they might have problems with that part because they hadn't mentioned it.
Replying to myself - I was thinking of Diplomacy, not RISK, on PLATO. NOW you know why we called it "backstab", which doesn't make much sense for Risk.
Diplomacy is not a deterministic game as, say, chess is. Since moves are executed simultaneously, there is imperfect information. Every game is different because the PLAYERS are the random element. It is also extremely well balanced in published form, changing the rules would be difficult to balance properly. However, there are apparently thousands of such variations, see the Wikipedia article on Diplomacy for some links.
There's no need to change the game rules. All you have to do is express the rules in your own words, rather than copying the wording of the "official rules" from Hasbro.
It isn't copyright, it is trademark. It isn't patent, because the patent would have expired by now. Terms of copyright should be shorter, but that isn't the issue here. The issue here is trademark, and Hasbro has a valid objection to calling a game "RISK".
Risk is still available, and is still popular. There's even a PlayStation version. I haven't checked to see if you have to play it all in one sitting, or if you can save the current board position, or if the game is saved on the server so it can be played among various people over a multiple-day period.
There was a version of RISK on PLATO in the 80's. Allowed 2-7 players per game, multiple games, settable time period. Due to concerns over trademark, it was renamed to "backstab".
Trademark (the only thing of relevance here, unless he was copying the words of the rules of the game, instead of using his own words to express the rules) lasts forever, as long as it continues to be used and defended.
Of course you can trademark the name of a game. The link you gave is talking about THE GAME ITSELF. The rules of the game can not be protected, although a specific expression of those rules can be.
They clearly have a valid trademark in the name "Risk", when applied to a game.
I offer the name "Backstab" as an alternate name for a Risk-like game, as long as use of said name is not made exclusive. I leave it as an exercise to write down the rules of the game in a non-infringing manner (and would suggest using a CC copyright on them).
No, that's not why they did it that way. They did it that way because if you specify an image size in an IMG tag, it scales the image. With the EMBED, specifying a size shows it at full scale with scroll bars. It could have been done similarly by putting the image in a frame. The intent was to allow scrolling the image without losing the controls on the left side of the page.
In any event, it still isn't "the patent office" that would be violating the patent, it would be the browser that loads an interactive control to display/manipulate that image, as there are plenty of ways that an EMBED can be done that doesn't infringe on the ridiculous claims of TFP.
You're right, it is a tiff, I just took a quick look at the loaded images and all those buttons were GIFs, missed that the main one wasn't. However, just the <embed> tag is not at issue here. It has to be one that has interactive controls In addition, according to the patent, it has to be running the interactive controls in a separate application. Apparently, that got mutated to make it read on a plugin architecture. But, that still brings up my question: what plugin? Every browser I know has gif/jpg/tiff/png/etc support built in directly, no external program or plugin required. Trying to make the patent apply to bringing up a an image with scrollbars (which is all that embed does) would hit enough prior art that it would be unenforceable, at least for that aspect of it.
Also, the patent office isn't infringing the patent, it would be the browser that implements it by automatically loading the program to handle the user interaction that is infringing the patent.
What matters is what a court would find to be a derived work - one important aspect is how the product is shipped, and how dependent the different parts are to each other. If you distribute it all as one work (with one installer), and it all works together seamlessly, and the plugins only work with Explorer, then the entire thing is probably legally a derivative work of all the parts. Thus, if one part is GPL, all of it must be GPL to be legally distributed in that fashion. FSF has said that splitting things off into a separate process and communicating with it through pipes or sockets probably makes it non-derivative, but it would still depend on how tightly entwined the two sets of code are, and it still matters whether the separate components are distributed and installed as a single product.
Whether that would be allowed, or whether the LGPL would be allowed, would be up to the patent grant. A "special exception" is not part of the GPL, and a patent grant that allows the patent to be used by software licensed with the GPL probably wouldn't apply to something that is not exactly GPL, nor would it apply to something that was licensed with the LGPL.
An amendment with the bill DADVSI, having for objective to assimilate to an offence of counterfeit, the edition, the diffusion and the promotion of any software likely to be used to place at the disposal of the information protected by the royalty and not integrating a tracing and inspecting device of the private use (technical measurement). Any software allowing the remote loading like certain software of discussion instantaneous (chat), any server software is concerned (P2P, HTTP, ftp, SSH...). This surrealist amendment was written at the origin by Vivendi Universal, then worked again by several Members of the Commission Sirinelli, a commission of the Higher Council of the Author's copyright and Artistic.
I corrected the word "chat" above - it got translated as "cat" (I thought the French were adamantly against using non-French words, especially in official documents - where'd they get the idea to use "chat"?). "Surrealist amendment"?
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McDeli's, fine. McDonald's or MacDonald's, no. Show me a restaurant, other than the one or two I've heard of that were using the name BEFORE The Fine Hamburger Company, that is called "MacDonald's" or "McDonald's". You'd also have a problem if you put up "Two Golden Arches" that were confusingly similar to TFHC. You don't have to exactly match the trademarked usage, it just has to be confusingly similar.
McDonald's does claim "McDonald's" as a trademark, btw, just as they claim a whole bunch of other things as trademarks.
You still end up paying for it, in increased price of services that use the roads. Part of what you pay to Amazon goes to FedEx, which pays fuel taxes which pay for the roads, for example. Part of your cost of food is the cost of the fuel which got it to the store, and part of that is the tax which pays for the road.
That's not strictly true. Some/many/most (?) places have laws regarding fruit trees growing over public right-of-way - that it is, in fact, ok to pick fruit from such trees.
Right, the mark in relation to their particular product or service. So a game called RISK is a particular product or service, in the field of games. They aren't claiming "global ownership of a generic term", they are only claiming it in relation to a game.
Sure, Dell is named after its founder. Doesn't help if someone else has the trademark, or the term has become generic. It isn't generic, though, even though it is a "real word". Nor could someone by the name of MacDonald start a restaurant called MacDonald's.
If Ford had allowed the name "Ford" to become generic for "car" (in the same way "Coke" has become generic for "soft drink" in parts of the South), they'd have lost the trademark, name of the founder or not.
And yes, Apple was being sued over Tiger. Not because it isn't a made-up word, though, but because someone else used the word in THEIR trademark, in a related field, as well. Tiger Direct lost, by the way. You'd have had a better argument by pointing out that Apple isn't actually claiming a trademark over Tiger!
Note that there are a lot of cars with trademarked animal names, though. I notice that Apple wasn't sued by Jaguar Cars.
I bet you could find at least one instance of "John's Photoshop" before the program was thus named. And what about Adobe?
You're badly misusing the term "generic" to mean "not a made-up word", and note that even a made up word can become generic, e.g. linoleum, aspirin.
So Apple, the various cat names for Mac OSX (Panther, Jaguar, Tiger), Safari, Photoshop, Adobe, Lotus, Dell, Gateway ... those are all invalid trademarks? Right.
Ok, I've done that in a text chat, but I don't recall seeing any + button on the audio or video chat window... I'll look for it next time I call my sister. Can you add while doing a one-way video, or add in a one-way video to a two-way?
However, RISK is not a generic term in the field of board games. And "Risk" can be easily shown to be confusingly similar to RISK that trademark protection would extend to it. The Windows case is diluted precisely because there are things like "X Windows" that already existed.
If the rules have a copyright notice on it, that's exactly what it is doing - copyrighting the text of the rules. There's nothing wrong with that. It isn't claiming copyright protection over any expression of rules with the same effect, only their own words.
No the USPTO administers trademarks. Your understanding of what trademark protects is woefully inadequate. A trademark on a board game clearly extends to computer games. If you created a program for doing insurance statistics and called it "RISK", you wouldn't be infringing. If you based a computer game on insurance companies and called it RISK, you almost certainly would be.
Oh, and as for "Backstab", I was confusing in my head Risk and Diplomacy. Ack! Backstab is a great name for a Diplomacy-like game.
It makes no sense to talk about trademark "only in connection with their version of the game". That's like saying that Ford only has a trademark in connection with their version of a car, but if someone makes a DIFFERENT car, they can call it a Ford as well.
Trademarks apply to areas of commerce. "Games" is one such area. You could make a car, and call it a "Risk Car" (as long as you don't call it a Ford Risk Car). You probably wouldn't sell any with that name, but Hasbro would have a lot of trouble trying to sue you for trademark infringement. Come out with a board game based on your Risk Car, and call it Risk Car Wars, and you probably WOULD lose in a trademark infringement suit (and it wouldn't matter if your game was similar or completely different).
A lawyer is going to be as vague as possible in such a letter - if you choose to stop using more than they have rights to, all the better for them. Since there is one element that is being infringed (the name "RISK"), the letter is not all bullshit. It is annoying, but if he named specific elements, and when it came to trial it turned out that part of the rules were verbatim copied and he hadn't mentioned it in his letter, they might have problems with that part because they hadn't mentioned it.
Replying to myself - I was thinking of Diplomacy, not RISK, on PLATO. NOW you know why we called it "backstab", which doesn't make much sense for Risk.
Diplomacy is not a deterministic game as, say, chess is. Since moves are executed simultaneously, there is imperfect information. Every game is different because the PLAYERS are the random element. It is also extremely well balanced in published form, changing the rules would be difficult to balance properly. However, there are apparently thousands of such variations, see the Wikipedia article on Diplomacy for some links.
There's no need to change the game rules. All you have to do is express the rules in your own words, rather than copying the wording of the "official rules" from Hasbro.
Actually, the PS2 RISK game IS network-enabled.
It isn't copyright, it is trademark. It isn't patent, because the patent would have expired by now. Terms of copyright should be shorter, but that isn't the issue here. The issue here is trademark, and Hasbro has a valid objection to calling a game "RISK".
Risk is still available, and is still popular. There's even a PlayStation version. I haven't checked to see if you have to play it all in one sitting, or if you can save the current board position, or if the game is saved on the server so it can be played among various people over a multiple-day period.
There was a version of RISK on PLATO in the 80's. Allowed 2-7 players per game, multiple games, settable time period. Due to concerns over trademark, it was renamed to "backstab".
Trademark (the only thing of relevance here, unless he was copying the words of the rules of the game, instead of using his own words to express the rules) lasts forever, as long as it continues to be used and defended.
Of course you can trademark the name of a game. The link you gave is talking about THE GAME ITSELF. The rules of the game can not be protected, although a specific expression of those rules can be.
They clearly have a valid trademark in the name "Risk", when applied to a game.
I offer the name "Backstab" as an alternate name for a Risk-like game, as long as use of said name is not made exclusive. I leave it as an exercise to write down the rules of the game in a non-infringing manner (and would suggest using a CC copyright on them).
No, that's not why they did it that way. They did it that way because if you specify an image size in an IMG tag, it scales the image. With the EMBED, specifying a size shows it at full scale with scroll bars. It could have been done similarly by putting the image in a frame. The intent was to allow scrolling the image without losing the controls on the left side of the page.
In any event, it still isn't "the patent office" that would be violating the patent, it would be the browser that loads an interactive control to display/manipulate that image, as there are plenty of ways that an EMBED can be done that doesn't infringe on the ridiculous claims of TFP.
You're right, it is a tiff, I just took a quick look at the loaded images and all those buttons were GIFs, missed that the main one wasn't. However, just the <embed> tag is not at issue here. It has to be one that has interactive controls In addition, according to the patent, it has to be running the interactive controls in a separate application. Apparently, that got mutated to make it read on a plugin architecture. But, that still brings up my question: what plugin? Every browser I know has gif/jpg/tiff/png/etc support built in directly, no external program or plugin required. Trying to make the patent apply to bringing up a an image with scrollbars (which is all that embed does) would hit enough prior art that it would be unenforceable, at least for that aspect of it.
Also, the patent office isn't infringing the patent, it would be the browser that implements it by automatically loading the program to handle the user interaction that is infringing the patent.
What matters is what a court would find to be a derived work - one important aspect is how the product is shipped, and how dependent the different parts are to each other. If you distribute it all as one work (with one installer), and it all works together seamlessly, and the plugins only work with Explorer, then the entire thing is probably legally a derivative work of all the parts. Thus, if one part is GPL, all of it must be GPL to be legally distributed in that fashion. FSF has said that splitting things off into a separate process and communicating with it through pipes or sockets probably makes it non-derivative, but it would still depend on how tightly entwined the two sets of code are, and it still matters whether the separate components are distributed and installed as a single product.
Whether that would be allowed, or whether the LGPL would be allowed, would be up to the patent grant. A "special exception" is not part of the GPL, and a patent grant that allows the patent to be used by software licensed with the GPL probably wouldn't apply to something that is not exactly GPL, nor would it apply to something that was licensed with the LGPL.
Yes, but what's the definition of artificial cheese food substitute?
Babelfish translation:
An amendment with the bill DADVSI, having for objective to assimilate to an offence of counterfeit, the edition, the diffusion and the promotion of any software likely to be used to place at the disposal of the information protected by the royalty and not integrating a tracing and inspecting device of the private use (technical measurement). Any software allowing the remote loading like certain software of discussion instantaneous (chat), any server software is concerned (P2P, HTTP, ftp, SSH...). This surrealist amendment was written at the origin by Vivendi Universal, then worked again by several Members of the Commission Sirinelli, a commission of the Higher Council of the Author's copyright and Artistic.
I corrected the word "chat" above - it got translated as "cat" (I thought the French were adamantly against using non-French words, especially in official documents - where'd they get the idea to use "chat"?). "Surrealist amendment"?
I have no problem with the French people. It's just that damned language they speak.