on Wed, Jul 04, 2001 at 07:04:32PM -0400, Carl Fink (carlf@nitpicking.com) wrote: > On Wed, Jul 04, 2001 at 05:39:33PM -0400, Jason Healy wrote: > > 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) . . . > > Urban myth. Actually the trademark was invalidated after World War One (in > the Versaille Treaty, according to some sources I've seen) because Bayer was > a German company. It's still a valid mark in Europe. Not sure if it was after the treaty or during the war. The US branch of the company was liquidated/nationalized/appropriated by the US, and the trademark voided, according to several different angles I've heard. I've researched this casually a few times over the years but never really found a definitive answer, odd, as it's such a striking example of trademark loss. Loss of a trademark is not altogether straightforward, Adobe appears to be acting overly aggressively in this case. -- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org Are these opinions my employer's? Hah! I don't believe them myself!
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