Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:19331 misc.legal:5858 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!purdue!decwrl!decvax!tektronix!percival!qiclab!leonard From: leonard@qiclab.UUCP (Leonard Erickson) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,misc.legal Subject: Is ARC a valid trademark? Message-ID: <1682@qiclab.UUCP> Date: 19 Sep 88 04:51:58 GMT Reply-To: leonard@qiclab.UUCP (Leonard Erickson) Organization: Qic Laboratories, Portland, Oregon. Lines: 20 I seem to vaguely recall hearing somethiing to the effect that you cannot trademark a "descriptive" term. (forgive the vagueness as it has been a *long* time since I saw this) ARC is about as descriptive as you can get given the DOS restriction on file extensions... In any case, I *do* recall that letting your trademark be used as a generic term can result in loss of trademark status. Xerox used to regularly bug magazines about writers using Xerox this way ("Marge, xerox a few copies of this..."). Since until this lawsuit, there is little evidence that SEA was actively seeking to prevent this, they may be in for a *real* shock if they run into someone with the bucks to fight this in court. -- Leonard Erickson ...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard CIS: [70465,203] ...!tektronix!reed!qiclab!leonard "I used to be a hacker. Now I'm a 'microcomputer specialist'. You know... I'd rather be a hacker."