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From: stpeters@dawn.steinmetz (Dick St.Peters)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news,comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Adobe flagellating PostScript trademark
Message-ID: <10218@steinmetz.steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 2 Apr 88 21:39:58 GMT
References: <4237@hoptoad.uucp> <1803@ssc-vax.UUCP> <1668@pixar.UUCP> <4294@hoptoad.uucp>
Sender: news@steinmetz.steinmetz.ge.com
Reply-To: dawn!stpeters@steinmetz.UUCP (Dick St.Peters)
Followup-To: misc.legal
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 22

In article <4294@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
>Something tells
>me our laws need changing when you can put something's specs in the
>public domain while keeping its name proprietary.
>
>It's a good thing the first guy to build a toaster didn't trademark
>"Toaster" or we'd have lawyers chasing us to call it a "bread browning
>machine".

Under US law, if a trademark name becomes widely enough used for a
type of product to be considered to have "entered the language" (I
think that's the phrase lawyers use) as a generic designation for that
type of product, then the trademark can be invalidated in court.  A
classic example is "kleenex".  "Toaster" might well be another, for
all I know.

I've directed followups to misc.legal, since this is getting off track.
--
Dick St.Peters                        
GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY
stpeters@ge-crd.arpa              
uunet!steinmetz!stpeters