Quoting Jaromil (jaro...@dyne.org): > it really looks bad so lets omit it. we have a registered trademark to > defend ourselves from felony of all sorts ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Let's talk for a moment about what you can and cannot do with a trademark. In Europe, trademarks can be registered with the EUIPO in Alicante, España. Or it can be registered at the national level. (The advantages of a EUTM = EU trademark should be obvious; a uniform right applicable in all member states, and avoiding paying fees in each such state. The only major drawback is that opposition from within any member state could result in denial of the entire application.) Note that you can have valid trademark in some states with UK-descended common law systems under the theory of 'common law trademark', e.g., the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, United States, other Commonwealth countries, some others, albeit common law trademarks have less enforcement power. And what is that enforcement power? It is essentially the power to prevent the use of the trademark-covered distinctive word, phrase, or logo in _unfair commercial competition_ within your industry / market segment. Such use by commercial competitors in any way likely to create confusion in _your_ customers, i.e., making your customers think the competing goods/services were produced or endorsed by you, is a tort and can be suppressed through civil action, plus you can get monetary damages. But that is -all- you can do with trademark enforcement. No use against 'felony of all sorts'. The three subcategories of 'trademark' as a general concept are: Trademarks in the strict sense (marks covering goods), service marks (marks covering services), and certification marks (covering conformance programmes, mostly by trade associations regulating origins of goods, a product quality standard, or some similar sort of certification standard). You will occasionally see SM for service marks after a phrase for a commercial service, for this reason, in the same sense you might see TM after the name of a tangible-goods product -- but these two symbols typically indicate an _unregistered_ (common law) mark, because anyone who paid for a registered mark would tend to put ®, instead, as it makes a stronger statement about enforceability (which is after all what the owner paid for). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_mark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certification_mark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark Open Software Initiative's 'OSI Certified' trademark program for aspiring oppen source licences is, for example, a certification mark, not a trademark in the strict sense (not a sale of goods) nor a service mark (not a service). Other major nation-states' agencies offering trademark registration: o Trademark Registry of the Hong Kong Intellectual Property Department (in my old home town of Victoria, Hong Kong, a few blocks from my old flat) o Japan Patent Office o UK Intellectual Property Office o USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) o China Trade Mark Office (CTMO) o Canadian Intellectual Property Office o Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks (India) o IP Australia There are of course many others, it being a big world. ;-> -- Cheers, Grossman's Law: "In time of crisis, people do not rise to Rick Moen the occasion. They fall to the level of their training." r...@linuxmafia.com http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/lexicon.html#grossman McQ! (4x80) _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
