Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!killer!bigtex!james From: james@bigtex.uucp (James Van Artsdalen) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Phil Katz (PKARC author) sued by SEA Message-ID: <2988@bigtex.uucp> Date: 25 Jun 88 21:03:09 GMT References: <5912@megaron.arizona.edu> <4499@killer.UUCP> Reply-To: james@bigtex.UUCP (James Van Artsdalen) Organization: F.B.N. Software, Austin TX Lines: 36 IN article <4499@killer.UUCP>, richardh@killer.UUCP (Richard Hargrove) wrote: > [ look & feel issues ] > Since then a number of companies have been zinged on that one, the most > well known one being what Apple did to Digital Research over GEM. Apple never won a judgment against Digital. They apparently never even filed. They merely threatened a war of attrition that Digital would lose. > As for > number 2, this one is even more open to judgment. What right does SEA > have to the name ARC? What constitutes a major enough variation to keep > from being an infringement? I noticed that Wendin changed the name of > PC-UNIX to PCNX; "unix" is a strong trademark. Not only has it been around a long time (I forget the legal name for it, but after a few years a trademark gains strength from the passage of time), but it's not something you would dream up to name an operating system every day. "ARC", if trademarked, is a very weak trademark. It hasn't been around long enough, but more importantly, you *would* think up the word "arc" to use for a program that does archiving. In fact I assume that other programs or systems have used those three letters as a program name or file extension/type. SEA won't keep "ARC" as a trademark. BTW: The 5th circuit appellate court ruled on Vault vs. Quaid last Tuesday. I have the decision and it's pretty interesting. Quaid won a complete victory, and the shrink-wrap prohibitions against disassembly were explicitly ruled unenforcable. Ruling also lets you modify programs at will to any extent useful, and voids contract clauses preventing that. -- James R. Van Artsdalen ...!ut-sally!utastro!bigtex!james "Live Free or Die" Home: 512-346-2444 Work: 328-0282; 110 Wild Basin Rd. Ste #230, Austin TX 78746