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From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,talk.bizarre
Subject: Re: Silly IBM law suit
Message-ID: <1098@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 4-Sep-87 02:23:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: bsu-cs.1098
Posted: Fri Sep  4 02:23:58 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 5-Sep-87 16:45:34 EDT
References: <681@neoucom.UUCP> <6125@ut-ngp.UUCP> <2342@bellcore.bellcore.com>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 16
Keywords: 2 is a trademark of IBM
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.ibm.pc:7465 talk.bizarre:3529

In article <2342@bellcore.bellcore.com> tr@wind.UUCP (tom reingold) writes:
>I read about a lawsuit that really made me laugh.  Computer Land sued
>Business Land because of the "Land" in the name.  Fortunately, the
>judge threw the suit out, saying, "What are you going to do next, sue
>Disneyland??"

Actually it's a bit ironical, because Computerland had a predecessor
called Computer Shack, and it had to change its name because Radio
Shack sued it successfully.  

Both land and shack are pretty generic terms, as are words such as
"computer", "micro", "soft", "pc", and "sig".  Yet combine them two at
a time, and you get a trademark that judges will frequently uphold as
valid.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  {ihnp4,seismo}!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi