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From: bp@pixar.uucp (Bruce Perens)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news,comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Adobe flagellating PostScript trademark
Message-ID: <1685@pixar.UUCP>
Date: 3 Apr 88 01:48:33 GMT
References: <4237@hoptoad.uucp> <1803@ssc-vax.UUCP> <1668@pixar.UUCP> <4294@hoptoad.uucp>
Sender: news@pixar.UUCP
Reply-To: bp@pixar.uucp (Bruce Perens)
Organization: Pixar -- Marin County, California
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gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes in <4294@hoptoad.uucp>
>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".

If a trade name becomes the "generic" name for something, the owner of
the trade name can lose their right to restrict the name. Years ago
there was a flap over the status of "Formica", a trade name that became
close to generic for laminated mica surfacing. You've heard those silly
commericals for "Sanka BRAND decaffinated coffee" - they go to great
pains to establish that "Sanka" is not a generic name for decaffinated
coffee. I don't know if any of this could apply to the PostScript page
description language.

Trade names can protect you, too... Suppose you were the vendor of
"MacNeWS", and another company came out with a similar but not identical
product, and called it "MacNEWS"...
						Bruce Perens