Subject:
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Re: Lego at Gerf.Org
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.publish
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Date:
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Tue, 28 Sep 1999 19:53:35 GMT
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Viewed:
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784 times
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Disclaimer on the following - I am not a lawyer...
Matthew Miller wrote:
>
> Larry Pieniazek <lar@voyager.net> wrote:
> > Joe Unwashed has about a 50% chance(2) of thinking lego.gerf.org is somehow
> > related to TLG.
>
> The problem is that this really is a new medium. The people who wrote the
> Fair Play statement don't seem to understand it completely, but what they do
> say actually is pretty reasonable. Although I've got issues with connecting
> DNS and trademark law in general, I'm willing to compromise. [1] But
> claiming that any trademarked word/phrase can't be used as a host name is a
> really bad precedent -- it's amazing how many things are trademarked! We'd
> basically have a throwback to not having any DNS at all, as people are
> forced to come up with more and more random terms. It's a pretty small
> namespace, really.
>
> I'm writing this message from a computer named "jadzia". Guess what? That's
> a trademarked term of Paramount. And that's just a fairly uncommon name.
> They've also trademarked "Quark", so don't name anything that. Or "Q". Or
> "Paramount", for that matter.
Note that trademarks usually are limited to the market domain (both
region covered by the market, and the product set) of the trademark.
Thus, using LEGO in association with construction toys is an
infringement of TLG's trademark. Using LEGO to in association with
something totally unrelated is totally different. If you used quark in
association with television or movies, you would be infringing on
Paramount's trademark. If you used it for a web site about the physics
of quarks, you should be ok.
Interesting aside, does anyone know if there was any fallout when Apple
computer started to offer serious music capabilities? They settled with
Apple Records to continue to use the trademark because they produced
computers not records.
> It's foolish to let corporate interests (even those of companies we love)
> take away a whole chunk of language from normal people just because the
> technology isn't widely understood.
Trademarks are important. If there was no protection of trademarks,
modern commerce would be very difficult. Imagine if some company
produced adult novelty products, calling the brand LEGO, and using the
same packaging as TLG... THat is not to say that there are abuses of
trademark law (I have heard that IBM trademarked the letters I, B, and
M. If trademark law had no domain limitations, it would only take a
handfull of companies registering the letters of their initials to
create a situation where no one else could advertise anything).
I think TLG is being very generous in allowing the use of their
trademarks and copyrighted information. Other companies have used their
trademark protection to shut down all but authorized web sites.
--
Frank Filz
-----------------------------
Work: mailto:ffilz@us.ibm.com (business only please)
Home: mailto:ffilz@mindspring.com
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Lego at Gerf.Org
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| (...) Actually, I think that the goods/services class system is an extremely good reason for not allowing trademarks to have anything to do with domain (or host) names. Since there's no way from looking at a domain/host name to tell what content -- (...) (25 years ago, 28-Sep-99, to lugnet.publish)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Lego at Gerf.Org
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| (...) The problem is that this really is a new medium. The people who wrote the Fair Play statement don't seem to understand it completely, but what they do say actually is pretty reasonable. Although I've got issues with connecting DNS and (...) (25 years ago, 28-Sep-99, to lugnet.publish)
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