[gl4java-usergroup] RE: trademarks

[Kerry L. B. <ke...@vs...>]

Preface: IANAL (I am not a lawyer) i.e. I haven't taken the bar exam (yet),
I'm a programmer - but I am a paralegal and have represented myself and
others in and out of court, have given lawyers obscene amounts of money to
answer similar questions and draw up contracts, ect. ad nauseum.  Nuff
disclaimer... :)

Trademark law is an ugly thing.  Once you obtain a trademark, it becomes
your legal duty to go after anyone and everyone who uses it without
permission.  The limits on "fair use" of someone else's trademark is prety
much limited to mentioning or describing their mark.  

For marks protecting products or product lines, it is considered "dilution"
and "confusing to the marketplace" if someone else uses a product or
product name which encorporates your mark, no matter how subtly.  For
example, Lego(tm)(sic) corp. just wrote a website which had used images of
a lego soldier and walkie talkie to cease and desist on these grounds.

If you don't do this, if you simply 'ignore' someone who's pushing the
edge, it becomes possible for another party to bend it much farther, and by
citing proof that you ignored someone else, they may win the right to use
your mark or (worse) to have your mark placed effectively into the public
domain.

This sucks, but its how the law works.  (Keeps lots of lawyers well fed. :)

In the case of gl4java, now that it is on their radar, they have the right
to issue a cease and desist or license use of a term which encorporates
their mark.

I'd recommend looking for other instances Sun has licensed use of the term
"java" as a subset of a product or package name to a (small) third party,
then start making a case for similarity to their trademark office.
Mentioning that the term has had high profile use will help.  The down side
is that Sun tends to ignore groups that don't pay annual "consulting" fees.

Kerry L. Bonin
Sr. Engineer, Security/Cryptography & Advanced Visualization, Cisco Systems.
VScape lead architect - Adaptive secure clustering for multiuser VR.