Subject:
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Re: Fan Thank You Letter
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.lego
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Date:
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Wed, 19 Jun 2002 19:57:37 GMT
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Viewed:
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1162 times
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Todd Thuma wrote:
> Any legal battle will require TLC to show how the
> competing OS hurts business or the company trademark.
It is conceivable to show that a competing OS hurts the company
trademark (I don't think LegOS does, other than in the use of LEGO in
the name).
> I say this with the understanding that someone might sue and they might find a
> jury willing to find in favor of the "idot" and find TLC liable. Afterall, a
> jury of morons found in favor of a woman that sculded herself after placing a
> cup of hot coffee between her legs in an automobile prior to driving away from
> the drive-up window.
This is a really poor example, and grossly unfair to the jury in
question. Evidence was introduced that McDonalds served coffee hotter
than other fast food places, and had ignored repeated complaints about
how hot it was. If you dismiss this complaint out of hand, you are
implicitly saying companies should have no responsibility for their
products. Please find a different example, one which was totally thrown
out by an appeals court (in this particular case, the appeals court
reduced the damages if I recall, which I think is also rather common,
especially for these multi-million dollar awards).
> Finally, the state of understanding of the terms intellectual property,
> copyright, patent and trademark is simply appaling. Doesn't anyone know what
> these terms mean and how to correctly apply them? TLC has intellectual property
> on the operating system and patent on the RCX. As long as no one takes apart
> the OS and re-engineer it with the original code, then they are not violating
> the intellectual property.
I think reverse engineering was used in the development of the competing
RCX OSes.
> If the software is "open-source" then the original
> code is open to this and without intellectual property (yes, if you add
> something to open source code you lose the right to claim intellectual property
> over it, no matter what your senator or house rep says).
This depends very much on the particular open source license involved.
Most open source licenses allow the author to retain copyright, but
grant license to the open source to use the IP involved. In fact, a
license which only granted the author the right to be acknowledged as
the author is granting IP to that author (and I would refuse to
contribute to an open source project which refused to acknowledge my
contribution).
> If you develop your own OS from top to bottom, you can claim IP only on the
> software not on the hardware it runs. TLC developed an OS that communicated
> with chips and circuitry that made the brick gather input and respond with
> output. You cannot claim IP over that, only the OS. If you develop your own OS
> to do this and its not based on TLC's IP then you are in the clear. The RCX is
> not covered by IP. It was up until it was patented. Now there is not an IP law
> in the land that can protect the RCX, it's covered by patent law.
Quibble: Patent Law is a major part of IP Law. In fact, I'm not sure of
any law which is called "IP Law". IP Law includes such laws as Patent
Law, Copyright Law, and Trademark Law.
> The RCX is patented. If some other company came along with an infra-red, 3
> input, 3 output device, with 4 opertating buttons, studs all over the thing,
> and it looked like the RCX, they would most likely loose the battle. However,
> another company might develop a 4 sensor, 8 motor device that runs off AC and
> can be directly connected to a computer, and this would not violate the patent
> (again this depends upon many things). If that device used LegOS for the OS,
> then I would think TLC would take immediate action to get the name of the OS
> changed. The problem is that no patent, no matter what, protects a company from
> this type of competition. You might be able to corner the market on, let's say,
> 60 second photo print developing (Polariod), and successfully sue other
> companies (Kodak) from issuing similar technology because the patent office
> issued a patent (mistakenly) on 60 second processing. This patent only lasts a
> few years (25, 50, etc). The fact of it is, that's competition and it makes
> economies stronger not weaker. The concept of the RCX is not patentable, so any
> company willing to invest R&D into a competing device along the same concept of
> the RCX is free to do so.
Actually, the basic concept of the RCX (a programmable brick which is
part of a system of construction toys) might be patentable. Of course
the fact that there is prior art probably means TLC's opportunities for
patenting the idea are limited, but whoever did it first could likely
have patented it.
Frank
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Fan Thank You Letter
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| (...) Boy, I sure need a course in "how!" I am searching the literature on how LINUX hurts the trademark on Windows. Or more to the point, how Pocket Linux hurts the trademark on an HP Handheld or palm computer that originally held as its OS the (...) (22 years ago, 20-Jun-02, to lugnet.lego)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Fan Thank You Letter
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| Jürgen, Thanks for the reference to the Article in Business 2.0. It was interesting to read an article by a writer that I feel has neither an understanding of Intellectual Property Law nor the LEGO Company. The author also demonstrates a poor (...) (22 years ago, 19-Jun-02, to lugnet.lego)
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