On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 7:00 PM, Bill Hart <goodwillh...@googlemail.com> wrote: > I don't understand. Why is it not reasonable? > > If Sage attempted to market a product called sage alpha, I would see > this as an attempt to profit from the goodwill associated with that > name because of the marketing of Wolfram Alpha. Don't you think that > would be unethical? > > I don't think the law allows them to claim the word alpha belongs > exclusively to them. It simply means that other mathematical software > producers, and probably search engine manufacturers and the like, > cannot market their product as "Alpha" or something so close to it as > to be confused with it. I can only think of dishonest reasons a > company would want to do so in the first place. > > I don't personally see trademarks as being as stupid as attempts at > patenting software and algorithms. > > Perhaps I misunderstand how trademarks are used/abused in US law. I > don't live in the US, so this is certainly possible. > > Note there is a software company which produces accounting software, I > think, which is called Sage. This seems to have caused no problems. As > far as I know, no one turned up on the sagemath website complaining > that their accountancy software doesn't do accounting. And I'm betting > the Sage accountancy people haven't had confused users trying to > report bugs in some modular symbols code expecting it to get fixed for > free.
General +1, though to be honest, I can remember several cases when people contacted me or the Sage lists for support or help with the accounting software, or when people wrote to tell me that, e.g., their girlfriend was very impressed they worked on Sage... until they found out it wasn't the accounting software :-). At UW the grants system is called SAGE = "System for Administering Grants electronically" and when I teach a Sage course, I will occasionally have financial secretaries at UW contact me about taking the class :-). Regarding trademarking "Sage", there are at least 10 (or more) trademarks on the name "Sage" already in a range of contexts, and I should add ours to the list (I have been lazy and haven't got around to it; clearly it would be a good way to spend Sage foundation money, since it is only about $200). Trademarks are all about context. William > > Bill. > > On 21 Feb, 02:21, Oscar Lazo <algebraicame...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On 20 feb, 20:04, "Dr. David Kirkby" <david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote: >> >> > Alex's comments about the terms of use of Wolfram Alpha >> >> >http://www.wolframalpha.com/termsofuse.html >> >> > got me amused when I read they have trademarked 'Alpha'. >> >> > Trademarks >> >> > Because the Wolfram family of companies markets a vast and growing array of >> > products, a list of our trademarks and registered trademarks would be >> > cumbersome >> > to list. Some trademarks associated with this website and service are >> > Wolfram >> > Alpha , Wolfram|Alpha , Wolfram , Alpha , Computational Knowledge Engine , >> > Spikey , Wolfram Mathematica , Mathematica . >> >> Those are very generic terms! They should not be available for >> trademarking in my oppinion... >> >> Oscar > > -- > To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to > sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel > URL: http://www.sagemath.org > -- William Stein Associate Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
