Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:19883 misc.legal:5949
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!ooblick
From: ooblick@eddie.MIT.EDU (Mikki Barry)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,misc.legal
Subject: Re: Is ARC a valid trademark?
Message-ID: <10177@eddie.MIT.EDU>
Date: 2 Oct 88 16:38:52 GMT
References: <1682@qiclab.UUCP> <3190@ttidca.TTI.COM> <10117@eddie.MIT.EDU> <3212@ttidca.TTI.COM> <40404@linus.UUCP> <30362@bbn.COM>
Reply-To: ooblick@eddie.MIT.EDU (Mikki Barry)
Organization: MIT, EE/CS Computer Facilities, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 30

In article <30362@bbn.COM> levin@BBN.COM (Joel B Levin) writes:
>Apple clearly had to come to some arrangement with the manufacturer of
>high fidelity equipment before they could use "Macintosh" as the name
>of their new computer.

However, Cadillac the car and Cadillac dog food are both registered
trademarks for their respective companies.  Our attorney informed us
that similar or identical marks are fine for products that are different
enough.  The arrangement Apple struck may have referred to an agreement
with McIntosh to not contest their registration application for Macintosh.

I am currently going through trademark registration myself and my desk is
littered with similar marks, but have been informed that I can use mine
because it is for computer networking software which is a far different 
product from the other marks.  If another contests it, however, it will
go into litigation, which is a pain in the neck.

Out of curiosity...

>INTERNET: levin@bbn.com

Has bbn registered a trademark on the word Internet?  My company,
Internet Systems Corporation was using the word as an abbreviation on a
product line since we believed it to be a word in common use.  However,
a company in Cambridge, NOT bbn told us that we could no longer do that
because they had registered the trademark.  Upon checking, we found that
they had not.  BBN's corporate attorneys may be interested in case they
actually *do* try to register it.

Mikki Barry