Another fool. Trademarks apply to commercial interests, the program is
non-commercial in nature. Thus it would be very difficult for anything
to be done about this for creating a free program from a free program.
Maybe you should check the fact that there is already another program called
improvisor that exists that is not Impro-Visor, it is a commercial company
that could claim trademark infringement against Impro-Visor.
So if anybody is in a problem it will be Impro-Visor first.
There is a reason. A scumbag company forced trademark issues to the front
even though they were doing FOSS. Trademarks in FOSS are just as bad as
software patents. Too bad most people do not get that.
Okay, maybe for names and logos used by FLOSS, the creative commons
should be forced as an agreement or something similar to this.
Trademarks can only be in violation when they are on similar things.Once again, WRONG. Trademark violations are when the use of a similar name, logo, image, etc. causes confusion with the original product. The products don't necessarily HAVE to be similar, just cause confusion with the trademark.
Something funny about confusing names. For my needs jconv can be a very
good audio application and a very useless Japanese code conversion.
So this would not be okay in Germany only, if there was a trademark
applicable in Germany.
Then Bob is guilty first and my project name is just due to his applications
name. Who is more guilty, a single person trying to do FOSS or a professor
and educational institution that should be in a better position and act more
appropriately? If my name is similar to theirs by derivation and that is
similar to the commercial one, then Bob and his ilk have unclean hands before
I ever made a project.
Since there is so much confusion surrounding how copyrights work
in FOSS, it should be no surprise that similar misunderstandings exist
for trademarks in the same situation.
This is FOSS, not commercial enterprise,
things do not need to operate exactly the same as in proprietary
situations. That goes as much for trademarks as it does for copyrights.
They made all kinds of crazy claims
and did not understand how futile it is for one FOSS project to try
to go after another one. I still have my similar name even though
they have a trademark. Trademarks are for commercial interest.
Claimed infringements on trademarks have to show that the existence
of a similarly named product causes or potentially causes damage
to the trademark holders product, company, bottom line, and so on.
7. What constitutes trademark infringement?
If a party owns the rights to a particular trademark, that party can sue subsequent parties for trademark infringement. 15 U.S.C. �� 1114, 1125. The standard is "likelihood of confusion." To be more specific, the use of a trademark in connection with the sale of a good constitutes infringement if it is likely to cause consumer confusion as to the source of those goods or as to the sponsorship or approval of such goods. In deciding whether consumers are likely to be confused, the courts will typically look to a number of factors, including: (1) the strength of the mark; (2) the proximity of the goods; (3) the similarity of the marks; (4) evidence of actual confusion; (5) the similarity of marketing channels used; (6) the degree of caution exercised by the typical purchaser; (7) the defendant's intent. Polaroid Corp. v. Polarad Elect. Corp., 287 F.2d 492 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 368 U.S. 820 (1961).
"
Note that damage to sales is not mentioned as a factor.