Re: linux a unix?

From: Floyd Davidson (floyd_at_barrow.com)
Date: 01/08/04 

Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 05:26:46 -0900

John Hasler <john@dhh.gt.org> wrote:
>Floyd Davidson writes:
>> They can't call it "UNIX".
>
>They can _call_ it anything they want. They cannot _sell_ it as "UNIX" (or
>"Unix", or "unix", etc).

"They" cannot do *anything* that is for profit or commercial
gain (e.g., publish a book) using references to trademarks which
are confusing in such a way that they gain from the goodwill of
said trademark.

Which is to say you cannot describe Linux as UNIX if you profit
from that description, whether that is selling Linux or selling
a book.

Just as clearly, you *can* describe Linux using "unix", or worse
yet even "UN*X". Those are both special cases in Trademark Law
and the same pattern would not apply if used with other trademarks,
such as McDonalds, AT&T, etc. where mixed case or upper case is
part of the distinctiveness of the trademark.

The reason is because "unix", "Unix", and "UN*X" have become
/generic/ terms of description for specifically non-UNIX
trademarked systems that are similar. Note that "UN*X" is also
unique among those in that The Open Group specifically requests
that it not be used in place of a valid UNIX trademark, because
it would be confusing and would dilute the valid trademark. In
addition to "UN*X", the term "UNIX-like" is *not* an appropriate
use of the trademark and should not be used where UNIX is valid.
(Unix-like is okay, as is "UNIX system-like".)

>> Apple has tried that, and is being sued over it by The Open Group in a
>> trademark infringement case.
>
>Apple was _selling_.

The terms "Unix" and "unix" have been used by many who were also
selling a product.

>> It would not be sufficient for the trademark holder to sue only for
>> selling a product labeled with the trademark!
>
>That is the only thing trademark law allows them to sue for.

Trademark holders are *required* to proactively defend their
trademarks, or lose them. *Any* commercial use of the
trademark, whether it is on a product labeled as such, or
otherwise, must be correct. That correctness includes both
catagories which require prior permission, and those which don't
(note that statements in published material that "XXX is a
trademark of the YYYY Company").

>> Hence AT&T/USL/Novel/Open Group would have had to send legal notice of
>> wrong doing to every printed use of the generic "unix" or "Unix" to
>> protect the trademark.
>
>Such efforts would have been pointless as trademark law gives them no power
>over such uses.

That is simply *not* true. (Perhaps I should have said "every
publishing use".)

>> However, they did not register those as trademarks and they did not make
>> attempts to protect them as trademarks.
>
>When registering a mark which consists of a simple string of letters (e.g.,
>UNIX, SUGARBIT) the USPTO requires that the mark be submitted in caps.

That is not true either. They required the entire form to be
filled out in upper case until a couple years ago. There are
*many* trademarks that use mixed case or all lower case.
NewsML, SpamAssassin, McDonalds, RealAudio, DolbyNet, Windows
NT, and NeXT are a rew obvious examples.

Though it also wouldn't make any difference, because *anything*
which might confuse a customer is in violation. Hence while
NeXT is a trademark, anyone labeling a computer NExT is almost
certainly going to lose any litigation.

>However, the law gives the mark owner control not only of exact
>reproductions of the mark, but also marks that are sufficiently similar to
>the mark to be likely to confuse the public. A mark that differs from a
>registered on only in capitalization certainly qualifies as confusingly
>similar.

The point is that just the case alone is *not* the question.
The question is the entire term and whether it is customarily
recognized as generic or not. "UNIX" is the trademark. "Unix"
and "unix" are well known generic terms, as is "UN*X", that have
*never* been defended against by the trademark holder. They
have also been in use as generic terms for at least 20 years.

>> Not that you and others are the only ones confused by the trademark
>> issues.
>
>I am not at all confused.

Ahem...

   Note that most trade publications (including
   TechTarget and whatis.com) use the mixed case "Unix"
   to refer generally to any of the various operating
   systems that evolved from the original one. The
   Open Group's industry standard operating system and
   trademark for branding is the all upper-case "UNIX."

http://searchcio.techtarget.com/gDefinition/0,294236,sid19_gci913006,00.html 

-- 
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd@barrow.com

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Differences Unixware/OpenServer/OpenUnix
    ... > UnixWare is Novell's name for the ancestral Unix code acquired by The ... > OSR5 is a good operating system for zero-admin environments. ... > OpenUnix is what Ransome Love's Caldera eventually called their ... I'm confusing OpenUnix with OpenLinux. ...
    (comp.unix.sco.misc)
  • Re: ASCII
    ... confusing, since I know very little about Unix. ... structure baffling and don't know where to start. ... partitions on my hard drive, but it's a GUI, and the main reason I got ... The hardest part of getting up to speed with Unix or Linux, ...
    (soc.religion.quaker)
  • Re: ancient kernels
    ... Lion's operating system course notes along with the complete source ... It may be somewhat confusing ... the purpose of creating the Unix OS? ...
    (comp.os.linux.misc)
  • Re: ancient kernels
    ... Lion's operating system course notes along with the complete source ... It may be somewhat confusing ... the purpose of creating the Unix OS? ... pipex .dot. ...
    (comp.os.linux.misc)
  • Kerberos talk in Orange County, CA U.S.A.
    ... Mark was originally scheduled to speak at the UUASC Los Angeles chapter ... > We're starting things off with an overview of Kerberos. ... Rooted in Unix, ...
    (comp.security.ssh)
Loading