[CentOS] Re: Linux Trademarked?

Wed Aug 24 03:34:52 UTC 2005
Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org>

On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 22:04 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
> Company A did license the executable, for execution only on
> proprietary hardware which it designed and manufactured.
> Company B later came along and trademarked the term mentioned
> above.
> Company B's lawyers informed Company A's lawyers that all
> use of the now trademarked term belonged solely to Company
> B, and that any use of Company B's now trademarked term
> must cease.
> Company A's lawyers informed all personnel in Company A that
> all such terms must be removed from all documentation.

Bingo!  That's the logic right there.  Company A had a _written_
licensing agreement.  Public distribution doesn't matter.  You had a
_written_ licensing agreement.

> After the engineers complained that there would be a massive
> editing effort to modify *comments*, the lawyers of Company A
> and Company B got together, studied the law, and concluded
> that, to comply with the law, Company A must perforce modify
> all documents, including non-disclosed proprietary trade
> secret source, even in comments, so that the now trademarked
> term did not appear anywhere.

Yes, because Company A was contractually obligated to terms in its
_written_ licensing agreement.  Dude, read some of these written
agreements sometime.  ;->

> That is not what the corporate lawyers concluded, and the company
> spent many $$$ to comply, belive me.

I know, I believe you.  But company A (yours I assume) had a _written_
licensing agreement.  Doesn't matter that it wasn't on the software
itself, it was for a product from company B, and there were trademarks
you had agreed to _in_writing_.  Even if they come later, read that
original, _written_ licensing agreement.

It's different when you do _not_ have something in writing.
So your story is 0% applicable.

> Perhaps now that the situation is more clear, we can be talking
> on the same page. (Unless we already were :-)

Yes, we were.

In fact, signing a licensing agreement with LMI might be _worse_.
Because if it has clauses that say they can change the terms at any
time, they might be able to, depending on how significant.

-- Bryan

P.S.  I worked in the semiconductor industry for almost 2 years were the
typical _single_user_ software license was over $250,000!  You betcha
they had references to not using trademarks, and I had to make sure my
code and scripts and other custom build tools obeyed them!  It sounds
like your company made a major oversight and suffered the
consequences.  ;->



-- 
Bryan J. Smith     b.j.smith at ieee.org     http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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