Re: [OT] Harassment of open source developer !
On Wed, Jul 04, 2001 at 05:39:33PM -0400, Jason Healy wrote:
> At 994279436s since epoch (07/04/01 16:43:56 -0400 UTC), Balbir Thomas wrote:
> > After all what kind of a person or company would want to levy a financial
> > burden on a man who has contributed his time and resources, for a community
> > benifit.
>
> [Obligitory IANAL]
>
> Probably because if you don't protect your trademarks in this country,
> they fall into the public domain. That's why you can say "asprin"
> when you want to cure a headache (because Bayer didn't defend its
> trademark), but not Xerox(tm) to mean photocopying, Kleenex(tm) to
> mean facial tissues, and Ziplock(tm) to refer to plastic storage bags.
>
> If Adobe doesn't sue people, well-intentioned as they may be, then
> they have no legal recourse against Microsoft Illustrator when it
> comes down the line.
>
> Admittedly, Adobe's lawyers were jerks about it, but still...
>
> Jason
>
First, let me point out that this news article was all over slashdot and other news sources
and I don't think it is relevant to this list. But since the brawl has already started I will
throw a couple of punches. Surely the word KIllustrator when we are talking about a page layout
formatting software is a clear reference to Adobe Illustrator. And Illustrator is Adobe's trademark
which they will defend with all the might of their legal department. I don't see why an open source
developer should get off any easier then anybody ( or anything ) else since <STRONG><SARCASM>law is the same
for everybody</SARCASM></STRONG> On the other hand the word illustrator has existed long before Adobe was around and I don't think they should have been allowed to patent that word as being a common use word. How about MS suing everybody for Word word or Intel suing for number 86 or IBM suing for number 2 or word Lotus. We have a trademark hell and do nothing about it. Everybody knows that there has been copyright infridgement lawsuits involving totally unrelated products and that at least some of those have been won. So, MS was denied patent for Word trademark and Intel and IBM were denied on the grounds that one cannot patent a number or symbol
I don't see why Adobe could patent illustrator.
P.S. In any case I sit at home, crawl in nessus source code with a bottle of beer and Purcel's song playing from my CD and feel fine. Hope everybody else is enjoying themselves.
--
FRIEND: A member of the opposite sex in your acquaintance who has some flaw which makes sleeping with him/her totally unappealing.
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