I always think of trade marks as intended to be passing off protection with extra statutory muscle.
This is what the uk patent office thinks (there is more about damage to reputation which I am not sure is argued here).
If you use an identical or similar trade mark for identical or similar goods and services to a registered trade mark - you may be infringing the registered mark if your use creates a likelihood of confusion on the part of the public. This includes the case where because of the similarities between the marks the public are led to the mistaken belief that the trade marks, although different, identify the goods or services of one and the same trader.
If your target market (the public needing confusion to be avoided) is non-specialist people and your knock off is pharmaceuticals, I would think packaging would need to be obviously different. If your target market is a bunch of obsessives and your knock off is 5% of the price of the defended item, I would say it is sufficiently clear that the item does not say "fluke" on the front and says "sparkfun" instead.
Not pretending I know about the way the colonies have gone with this law. Vested interests always have a way of lobbying for statutes and establishing precedents. Anyway, I think it is harsh to say it is the damn fault of the importer. This stuff is subtle and confusing. The lawyers who do this stuff are very expensive.
Hawk is absolutely right. This is a case about a contract of guarantee, which is one in the category including disposal of land, equitable interest etc. which requires signed writing. But the singature can be in any valid form. It's England and Wales not British.
If you read the text of the case, you will see that the judge expressly said that a printed signature can be a signature. But the from field added by your ISP can't be a signature.
If I have a batch of pre-printed stationary made up with my handwritten signature on it, that might get me in trouble if someone in my organisation comits to something on my behalf. So might a pre-inserted signature on an e-mail in similar circumstances.
But the line inserted by the ISP cannot be mistaken for an intention to sign, so it is not a signature. (i am an english contract lawyer)
By the way this court has only persuasive not binding precedent.
The funny thing is that they (msft) do not mention piracy directly. They list four good reasons why these 5% might want to have a bare pc.
The cartoon in their literature brings up the notion of piracy.
I have worked for big companies. I am a lawyer. All this mixed message stuff is not good in the context of investigation by regulators. The tone won't play well in the UK - it just doesn't look good to force people (by use of people with undisclosed numbers of street feet) to buy stuff they have already paid for or do not want to use.
Also: Tom Gilb. Principles of Software Engineering Management, Addison Wesley, 1990
From now on you are a hobby programmer only. Never put yourself in the plan for anything apart from managing. The type of managers that think they can carry on hacking don't do any managing - and that leads to chaos.
I have checked and the Real format listen again stream *is* the technology patent documentary and it's here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/inbusiness/ram/in business_current.ram
until 27th January. Listen again works directly from the broadcast stream: the BBC fills its broadcast output with trailers so that live shows which overrun slightly do not knock out the whole schedule. DO NOT be put off by the nice lady telling children's stories for the first 30 seconds of the stream. You might have to have a British internet presence to hear this: I can't be doing with proxying somewhere else to check.
If you are European, try to get an MP/MEP to listen to it.
Try to catch the BBC Radio 4 programme in business this week (warning the schedule info is correct but the content is still on last week's programme). I expected this to be just the normal corporate b/s, but it was in fact more interested in problems in the USA, particularly in patent examination. There are representatives on both sides of the argument, but I would have the "say no to patent expansion" side winning. There is a repeat on Sunday evening 21:30GMT. I don't know if the "listen again" has moved to the current edition yet - as I say, the web site is stuck on last week.
The BT privatisation came in when all of its assets were analogue and mainly electro mechanical. The capital price of digital switches - which cost less to maintain - were about to fall of a cliff. With 100% control of local loop (outside the city of Hull!) the competative forces on them were zero for years and the regulator measured price reductions against retail inflation not the falling cost of technology. BT used its monopolistic anti-competative pressure for as long as possible.
Now there is real competition, spot BT making huge mistakes, particularly the bungled merger with MCI and over-extension over third generation mobiles. They lost their mobile business over that.
This privatisation was successful, but the drivers were technology change. The lesson that private sector management is brilliant is not without challenge.
The company I work for is larger than an SME - it's sort of a small large company. It's big enough to employ staff to look at contracts, one of us has a law degree. We have no time to lodge patents. Our products do not generate enough income to pay for patents to be registered and defended. It is pretty likely that other companies have enough booby trap patents to stop us trading.
If it's a problem for us, then the SMEs will be in much worse shape. So the question is, where does his Lordship think that these SMEs are going to get the money to pay for all the patent agents they are going to need, and how can they defend themselves against the international mega-corps which have been doing defensive registration for years?
The total budget of the NHS is around $100bn per year. This is just a small part of the infrastructure. There are 1.2 million employees. Other big IT spending is being done in many other deals, and MS is not a big player in them. If MS ends up providing dumb terminals for the back office sustems, them perhaps in five years OS will prooovide a solution then.
I do not think there is an overspend on development. The costs now being considered are the implementation costs, for instance the hopital trusts have realised that they will need to have extra clinical staff to replace the ones that are in training, so they are putting in a bid to government for the funds for the extra doctors. In what will be an election year, they are using the normal channels - the newspapers.
The NHS is supposed to be the largest employer in Europe (?third in the world). This is a huge enterprise. That kind of money over ten years is noise. The total budget over ten years will be about a trillion dollars.
I am not entirely sure about this. I think that there is a requirement before you get the right to see data (the Data Subject Access right). The relevant data must be organised by something which is personal to you. Time and location would not qualify. If, for example, some facial recognition dohickey indexed the tapes, then there would be a DSA right. Yes, I am a data protection officer.
The comedian either used the corporate policies or corporate misunderstanding to make his program.
My area in Bristol is popular with users of crack cocaine. They need a constant stream of small amounts of money. Some crackheads roughed up an old woman in the street five metres from my house. The woman died of her injuries. Video from the security cameras was broadcast on television and the crackheads were identified, caught and locked up.
That does not help the family of the old lady and crackheads' needs are so extreme that they are difficult to defer. But: there is some sense of justice; and
generally the street at least *feels* safer now. There are still thefts from cars - I guess it takes something violent before the tapes are used.
In Bristol (UK), after TTT, the extended FOTR and TTT extendeds were shown once each on one screen in one theatre. IIRC on a Monday and Tuesday night respectively. I think there was a sign on the box office saying "beware of the leopard".
I agree to some extent, but I can see that people who live in countries where an occupying power did gross things on their land are coming from. They want the folk memory of the unconscionable acts to be preserved.
My Dad was in the second world war in the asian theatre, and I'm not happy to hear that Japan is systematically erasing its conduct then from history. Here in England we know, for instance, our part in the slave trade, inhuman administration of the empire, [the list goes on]. There is no movement to deny these horrors. We need to try not to repeat them.
Last time I went into Tesco (Walmart equivalent) stuff was expressed in pounds and kilos, and the evil Brussels spies haven't stopped them. In fact, pounds are optional but the kilos are compulsory. The legal policy behind this situation is that a market needs a level playing field and it was decided in the sixties that the level playing field is metric. Many younger people don't understand imperial - I'm not very quick on my 16 times table either.
Upshot: pounds, acres, gallons not illegal, just insufficient. Not a free speach issue.
The police currently use OCR vans to check vehicles which are driving without tax/insurance. Another police car pulls offending vehicles over. They are not that interested in road tax, but there is a high correlation of vehicles containing persons wanted by the police for other reasons with no tax.
I am not in favour of all of the facial recognition and other invasive stuff, but picking out crims who are too stupid to get a tax disk seems like something worth doing. People who drive without insurance deserve what they get.
Are you certain the motives here are good? Chances are that a marketing exec at BT is looking for some good PR by being the first to the post here - someone must have fed the story to the Observer newspaper. It looks like all the major ISPs are going the same way under pressure from a charity. As other people have said, this stuff is swapped between rings of people. Child abuse is an epidemic in the UK, and abusers use images as part of their tactics. But I hope no one signs up to BT and thinks, well that's keeping my child safe from the perverts. The irrational hysteria is not helping address the main source of the problem which is friends and family of the victim.
If anyone is interested, the act making this stuff illegal is Section 160 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
Slashdot Mirror
This is what the uk patent office thinks (there is more about damage to reputation which I am not sure is argued here).
If you use an identical or similar trade mark for identical or similar goods and services to a registered trade mark - you may be infringing the registered mark if your use creates a likelihood of confusion on the part of the public. This includes the case where because of the similarities between the marks the public are led to the mistaken belief that the trade marks, although different, identify the goods or services of one and the same trader.
If your target market (the public needing confusion to be avoided) is non-specialist people and your knock off is pharmaceuticals, I would think packaging would need to be obviously different. If your target market is a bunch of obsessives and your knock off is 5% of the price of the defended item, I would say it is sufficiently clear that the item does not say "fluke" on the front and says "sparkfun" instead.
Not pretending I know about the way the colonies have gone with this law. Vested interests always have a way of lobbying for statutes and establishing precedents. Anyway, I think it is harsh to say it is the damn fault of the importer. This stuff is subtle and confusing. The lawyers who do this stuff are very expensive.
Hawk is absolutely right. This is a case about a contract of guarantee, which is one in the category including disposal of land, equitable interest etc. which requires signed writing. But the singature can be in any valid form. It's England and Wales not British.
If I have a batch of pre-printed stationary made up with my handwritten signature on it, that might get me in trouble if someone in my organisation comits to something on my behalf. So might a pre-inserted signature on an e-mail in similar circumstances.
But the line inserted by the ISP cannot be mistaken for an intention to sign, so it is not a signature. (i am an english contract lawyer)
By the way this court has only persuasive not binding precedent.
We call it "Demanding money with manaces" contrary to the Theft Act 1968. Extrotion or blackmail ... they are such ugly words,
true but the cartoon puts the other message. Will sales study the text? Or will they remember the cartoon?
But I thought you *cared*. You helped us out in WW2 and all that.
The cartoon in their literature brings up the notion of piracy.
I have worked for big companies. I am a lawyer. All this mixed message stuff is not good in the context of investigation by regulators. The tone won't play well in the UK - it just doesn't look good to force people (by use of people with undisclosed numbers of street feet) to buy stuff they have already paid for or do not want to use.
From now on you are a hobby programmer only. Never put yourself in the plan for anything apart from managing. The type of managers that think they can carry on hacking don't do any managing - and that leads to chaos.
If you are European, try to get an MP/MEP to listen to it.
Try to catch the BBC Radio 4 programme in business this week (warning the schedule info is correct but the content is still on last week's programme). I expected this to be just the normal corporate b/s, but it was in fact more interested in problems in the USA, particularly in patent examination. There are representatives on both sides of the argument, but I would have the "say no to patent expansion" side winning. There is a repeat on Sunday evening 21:30GMT. I don't know if the "listen again" has moved to the current edition yet - as I say, the web site is stuck on last week.
It's a place in London called Walthamstow. It's OK for pie and a pint, but I wouldn't expect to find enlightenment there.
Now there is real competition, spot BT making huge mistakes, particularly the bungled merger with MCI and over-extension over third generation mobiles. They lost their mobile business over that.
This privatisation was successful, but the drivers were technology change. The lesson that private sector management is brilliant is not without challenge.
If it's a problem for us, then the SMEs will be in much worse shape. So the question is, where does his Lordship think that these SMEs are going to get the money to pay for all the patent agents they are going to need, and how can they defend themselves against the international mega-corps which have been doing defensive registration for years?
The total budget of the NHS is around $100bn per year. This is just a small part of the infrastructure. There are 1.2 million employees. Other big IT spending is being done in many other deals, and MS is not a big player in them. If MS ends up providing dumb terminals for the back office sustems, them perhaps in five years OS will prooovide a solution then.
I do not think there is an overspend on development. The costs now being considered are the implementation costs, for instance the hopital trusts have realised that they will need to have extra clinical staff to replace the ones that are in training, so they are putting in a bid to government for the funds for the extra doctors. In what will be an election year, they are using the normal channels - the newspapers.
The NHS is supposed to be the largest employer in Europe (?third in the world). This is a huge enterprise. That kind of money over ten years is noise. The total budget over ten years will be about a trillion dollars.
Sorry, its duty is to provide health care. It is not outdoor relief (social security) for software types.
The comedian either used the corporate policies or corporate misunderstanding to make his program.
That does not help the family of the old lady and crackheads' needs are so extreme that they are difficult to defer. But: there is some sense of justice; and generally the street at least *feels* safer now. There are still thefts from cars - I guess it takes something violent before the tapes are used.
Y'know with Gandalf driving around in the ice-cream truck warning of impending doom
In Bristol (UK), after TTT, the extended FOTR and TTT extendeds were shown once each on one screen in one theatre. IIRC on a Monday and Tuesday night respectively. I think there was a sign on the box office saying "beware of the leopard".
My Dad was in the second world war in the asian theatre, and I'm not happy to hear that Japan is systematically erasing its conduct then from history. Here in England we know, for instance, our part in the slave trade, inhuman administration of the empire, [the list goes on]. There is no movement to deny these horrors. We need to try not to repeat them.
Upshot: pounds, acres, gallons not illegal, just insufficient. Not a free speach issue.
I am not in favour of all of the facial recognition and other invasive stuff, but picking out crims who are too stupid to get a tax disk seems like something worth doing. People who drive without insurance deserve what they get.
If anyone is interested, the act making this stuff illegal is Section 160 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.