Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!aplcen!jhunix!c08_d103
From: c08_d103@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Ex-God)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Copyright status of Turing (and other languages)
Message-ID: <929@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
Date: 1 Mar 89 22:29:40 GMT
References: <173@qusunitf.queensu.CA>
Reply-To: ins_balb@jhunix.UUCP (Andy Matter)
Organization: The Johns Hopkins University - HCF
Lines: 27
Keywords:

Jim Cordy says:

>The *name* of the language can however be trademarked, and that
>is the typical way of protecting from, say, unscrupulous language
>implementors.  For example, you can build an Ada compiler if 
>you like, and publish a language spec for it that is isomorphic
>to Ada, but you cannot *call* it Ada unless you get the permission 
>of the trademark holder.  The main reason for doing this is to
>insure that implementations called by the language name actually 
>implement the language as specified.  In the case of Ada, this is
>tested using a validation suite of programs.

Question:  Are Forth and C trademarked names?  I've seen PD
implementations of both Forth and C that I'm pretty sure were never
checked with anyone (or at least never checked in any detail
whatsoever).  Will they allow names like C to be trademarked?  (I
guess if "Real" and "Good Food" have been trademarked in dairy and
food products, "C" isn't any more of a common word or anything....)

Further question:  If Forth is a trademarked name, does GraForth (for
example), need to be checked?  (Especially since it's only a loosely
equivalent language).

    --	Andy Matter
        ins_balb@jhunix/ins_balb@jhuvms/c08_d103@jhunix
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