Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!RICEVM1!SCHAFER
From: SCHAFER@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Richard A. Schafer)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.policy-l
Subject: Re: What's in a name
Message-ID: <900208.220448.CST.SCHAFER@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>
Date: 9 Feb 90 04:04:48 GMT
Sender: Discussion about BITNET policies <POLICY-L@BITNIC>
Reply-To: Discussion about BITNET policies <POLICY-L@BITNIC>
Organization: Networking and Computing Systems, Rice University
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In-Reply-To:  Message of Thu, 8 Feb 90 18:08:53 EST from <MAINTCMS@PUCC>

On Thu, 8 Feb 90 18:08:53 EST John Wagner said:
>On Thu, 8 Feb 90 16:51:16 EST Jim Conklin said:
>> Probably someone should be writing to vendors and magazines which don't
>>properly show the trademark symbol when they use these trademarks.  Any
>>volunteers out there; we certainly don't have time for that level of
>>follow-up at the moment!
>
>Writing to vendors and magazines is the job of Cren Corporate Counsel.
>They may legally say they are reprsenting the board.  A volunteer
>cannot do this.
While I agree that BITNIC has no time (or business) dealing with
this issue directly, John is absolutely right in saying that BITNIC ought
to forward reports of trademark misuse to the CREN Corporate Counsel,
who presumably is being paid to take care of things like that.

In fact, trademark law precedents make it clear that if CREN does *not*
pursue this avenue of protecting our trademark, then the trademark will
cease to have any legal enforceability whatsoever quite quickly.

Now for the bad news: folks, this applies to us, too!  How many of
you are publishing newsletters, etc., with BITNET in them without
noting that BITNET is a (lord, I hope) registered trademark of CREN?
Yes, that is also a violation of CREN's trademark rights, I believe,
even though we are BITNET members.

By the way: I believe that we need to have an approved capitalization
for this trademark, although if they were intelligent, the lawyers had
us trademark almost every capitalization possible, I suppose.  Is it
BITNET, Bitnet, BitNet, BiTNET (using the NeXT precedent), or what?

Just to make sure we're all doing it right, BITNET is a registered
trademark of CREN, Inc., right?

Richard

P.S. Yes, I know that many people don't bother to note trademarks like
UNIX(*), but that doesn't make it right.

UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T (I think).

Richard