yes but this runs contrary to accepted legal protections - ie if you're not doing something illegal you are not required to prove it's not illegal before doing it.
Would you mind providing an example of 99% compliance with parole conditions ? that would require at least 100 different restrictions being put on the parolee - likely to be considered overly burdensome when they're brought before a judge for a violation.
Do you comply 100% with the law 24 hours a day 365 days a year ? including even the stupid laws you didn't know existed ?
The judge may likely get some heat for this her previous remarks and orders give some appearance of bias but in reality the appeal court will simply vacate and remand back to her. Although I'm not sure what the appeal courts position will be on a jusge effectively reinstating an order they had vacated - they might get a bit grumpy about that.
Not to mention the independant artists who have lost a distribution channel for their work because of an overzlealous judge making orders that don't stand up to legal scrutiny.
The reason we ("the open source community") want the MySql trademark protecting is prevent unauthorised products from using the name - think Microsoft MySQL Server or something.
I can't figure this out - just two days ago everyone was saying how right Adobe were for seeking to protect their trademark on the word Illustrator which they stole from all the English speaking people of the world - now because it's an open source company trying to protect it's name (BTW MySQL is not a dictionary word) it's suddenly bad.
US Trademark law is pretty much irrelavant in this case because Adobe was acting in Germany not the USA and bacuse US trademark & patent law is pretty much incompatible with a large part of the rest of the world.
Patents were designed to protect a "novel" solution to a problem - how many patents do you see which claim ownership of all the methods of doing something without ever defining one of them ie. "A box that records tv programs for later viewing"
Trademarks likewise were intended to protect a unique name or mark used in the course of business not to allow a corporation to claim ownership of a dictionary word.
OR more likely a failure of the clerks in the trademark office. When are people going to figure out that putting a capital letter on an English word doesn't make it something unique that you invented - it's still an English word.
If KIllustrator was using the word Illustrator in a purely descriptive fashion - ie to describe the function of the program then it's hard to imagine there being a case here. Otherwise microsoft would have trademarks on keyboard, mouse, computer, disc etc. by now
Much of the world does not allow trademarking of an English word on the grounds you didn't invent it and it belongs to everybody.
Just out of curiosity in how many contries is the game Clue marketed as Cluedo because the country in question won't recognise the tradmark on the work Clue
Remember NT is a trademark of Northern Telecom Ltd.
Not to mention the cable company has a legal monopoly on cabling your home. Other providers can offer service over that cable (for TV) but they can't just come in and lay a new cable.
I'm sorry it's dumb - only the USA lets you regular english word as a trademark - a trademark is required to be unique in your field before it becomes such.
By what you're saying I could produce a car called car and sue everybody else who calls their car a car.
Don't worry we're actively working to get rid of as much M$ software as we can - we have linux installed on our intranet server and a couple of other servers and have been evaluating desktop applications for some time.
This case is as much to do with bizzare riaa licensing terms as anything else.
If you broadcast random music at people you are covered under their blanket internet radio license.
If you allow the user to choose what they hear you are not and have to negotiate separate licenses with the record companies. (and usually pay more $$$)
Isn't it time for an open licensing process where the RIAA lists the fees for playing a number of songs per hour and you just pay it instead of all these backroom deals that nobody understands ???
This is one of the funniest articles I've read in a while. Clearly the guy doesn't have a clue.
I like his claim that open source software undermines intellectual property - not really - it may undermine profiting from said property but the copyright still rests with the author - the GPL is a license not a renunciation of copyright. Copyright holders have always been allowed to license their works for free if they want.
As for their lobying efforts... what so now they want to legislate away the rights of an author to license his works as he sees fit - yeah that'll work....... not !
So we have a trademark registered as ssh - yet we also have an open standard called ssh and apparently a program from AT&T Unix called ssh which predates the ssh trademark. Not to mention no efforts to prevent the use of ssh (uncapitalised no registered trademark symbol) from falling into common usage.
Doesn't look enforceable to me. Ask Kleenex about not protecting trademark rights.
Slashdot Mirror
yes but this runs contrary to accepted legal protections - ie if you're not doing something illegal you are not required to prove it's not illegal before doing it.
Would you mind providing an example of 99% compliance with parole conditions ? that would require at least 100 different restrictions being put on the parolee - likely to be considered overly burdensome when they're brought before a judge for a violation.
Do you comply 100% with the law 24 hours a day 365 days a year ? including even the stupid laws you didn't know existed ?
The judge may likely get some heat for this her previous remarks and orders give some appearance of bias but in reality the appeal court will simply vacate and remand back to her. Although I'm not sure what the appeal courts position will be on a jusge effectively reinstating an order they had vacated - they might get a bit grumpy about that.
Not to mention the independant artists who have lost a distribution channel for their work because of an overzlealous judge making orders that don't stand up to legal scrutiny.
The reason we ("the open source community") want the MySql trademark protecting is prevent unauthorised products from using the name - think Microsoft MySQL Server or something.
I can't figure this out - just two days ago everyone was saying how right Adobe were for seeking to protect their trademark on the word Illustrator which they stole from all the English speaking people of the world - now because it's an open source company trying to protect it's name (BTW MySQL is not a dictionary word) it's suddenly bad.
What !! so apple owns emacs now ??? why wasn't I notified !!!
US Trademark law is pretty much irrelavant in this case because Adobe was acting in Germany not the USA and bacuse US trademark & patent law is pretty much incompatible with a large part of the rest of the world.
Patents were designed to protect a "novel" solution to a problem - how many patents do you see which claim ownership of all the methods of doing something without ever defining one of them ie. "A box that records tv programs for later viewing"
Trademarks likewise were intended to protect a unique name or mark used in the course of business not to allow a corporation to claim ownership of a dictionary word.
OR more likely a failure of the clerks in the trademark office. When are people going to figure out that putting a capital letter on an English word doesn't make it something unique that you invented - it's still an English word.
If KIllustrator was using the word Illustrator in a purely descriptive fashion - ie to describe the function of the program then it's hard to imagine there being a case here. Otherwise microsoft would have trademarks on keyboard, mouse, computer, disc etc. by now
Much of the world does not allow trademarking of an English word on the grounds you didn't invent it and it belongs to everybody.
Just out of curiosity in how many contries is the game Clue marketed as Cluedo because the country in question won't recognise the tradmark on the work Clue
Remember NT is a trademark of Northern Telecom Ltd.
Well all the experts were quick enough to declare napster dead after 7 days of outage so I guess MSN Messenger must be over too.
Not to mention the cable company has a legal monopoly on cabling your home. Other providers can offer service over that cable (for TV) but they can't just come in and lay a new cable.
I'm sorry it's dumb - only the USA lets you regular english word as a trademark - a trademark is required to be unique in your field before it becomes such.
By what you're saying I could produce a car called car and sue everybody else who calls their car a car.
So why aren't microsoft going after things like x-windows, open windows ... etc.?
You cannot enforce a trademark if you have allowed it to fall into use as a regular word (Kleenex for example).
So what makes Adobe think they can enforce a trademark that was a regular word before they trademarked it ?
"Adobe illustrator" would be enforcable "Illustrator" alone would not.
Disclaimer : IANAL - I don't even play one on the Internet.
Do the math ... E=2*D F=4*D g=8*D H=16*D I=32*D so J=64*D
No I prefer just one J Motor actually .....
Rockets with big motors
Seriously Estes has E Engines back in production :-)
Or check out my web site for a whole bunch of people who have forgotten more about rockets than Steve Bennett Knows.
Don't worry we're actively working to get rid of as much M$ software as we can - we have linux installed on our intranet server and a couple of other servers and have been evaluating desktop applications for some time.
We were also forced to sign up for a passport account in order to view the records of what microsoft licenses we have purchased.
ok you're right I missed a timezone there :-)
UTC doesn't have daylight saving time so EDT=UTC-5 not 4.
I can see the day coming when we have to pay several times for the same file.
One when you download it, once to write it to cd, again to put it on your personal mp3 player.
I have a question though :
right now napster is viewed as committing contributary copyright infringement by assisting others to copy without paying.
If we're paying to write the song to cd then I'm not infringing by definition so does the napster issue go away ?
This case is as much to do with bizzare riaa licensing terms as anything else.
If you broadcast random music at people you are covered under their blanket internet radio license.
If you allow the user to choose what they hear you are not and have to negotiate separate licenses with the record companies. (and usually pay more $$$)
Isn't it time for an open licensing process where the RIAA lists the fees for playing a number of songs per hour and you just pay it instead of all these backroom deals that nobody understands ???
Don't joke about it :-) BT the phone company in England claims to have a patent on the hyperlink.
We'll be paying by the click real soon :-)
This is one of the funniest articles I've read in a while. Clearly the guy doesn't have a clue. I like his claim that open source software undermines intellectual property - not really - it may undermine profiting from said property but the copyright still rests with the author - the GPL is a license not a renunciation of copyright. Copyright holders have always been allowed to license their works for free if they want. As for their lobying efforts ... what so now they want to legislate away the rights of an author to license his works as he sees fit - yeah that'll work ....... not !
So we have a trademark registered as ssh - yet we also have an open standard called ssh and apparently a program from AT&T Unix called ssh which predates the ssh trademark. Not to mention no efforts to prevent the use of ssh (uncapitalised no registered trademark symbol) from falling into common usage. Doesn't look enforceable to me. Ask Kleenex about not protecting trademark rights.