Re: firefox -> iceweasel package is probably not legal
On Wednesday 06 December 2006 14:30, Michael Poole wrote:
> Would you lawyers (in practice or in training) please set aside that
> lamentable habit, so frequently seen in US court filings, of trying to
> provoke inadvertent admissions by baldly making factually wrong
> statements?
(Interesting tidbit... found out I passed the California Bar a few weeks ago,
so I'm just waiting to hear back on my moral character evaluation and I can
drop that pesky "in training label.")
> Apparently law instead requires us to assume users are in fact morons
> in a hurry. What a sad state of affairs.
Yes, that's exactly what the law requires. The consumer is not you or me, but
the "average consumer" of the good in question. Actually, some have argued
the threshold is even lower... just the average consumer of stuff[1]. And I
suggest the average consumer of stuff (or browsers) does not care about the
finer distinctions of apt repositories or the getfirefoxnow.com campaign.
It's not a sad state of affairs so much as it is a policy decision to favor
the holder of marks over those who try to push their own product using their
competitor's good name.
-Sean
[1] My trademarks prof, who did trademark work for wine companies, really
disliked that line of reasoning, since wine consumers are usually of higher
sophistication and could distinguish beer from wine. However, the PTO
commonly denied his client's marks on the grounds that a beer company already
had the mark and the international goods category lumped wines and beer
together as alcoholic beverages.
--
Sean Kellogg
e: skellogg@u.washington.edu
w: http://blog.probonogeek.org/
So, let go
...Jump in
...Oh well, what you waiting for?
...it's all right
...'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown
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