Like all such discussions that deal with the law .. get a lawyer. Discussions on lists are just wasted electrons because in the end, you will need to get a trademark lawyer involved to explain the googles of pages of US Trademark laws, International Trademark treaties and laws, and probably a hundred other items that all deal with this. The simplest explanation in the US is that a company MUST defend to the death any and all trademark claims or risk losing the trademark. The strangest thing is it must rigorously define what the trademark covers but not what it doesn't. And having worked in Red Hat support for many years before going on elsewhere.. we had a LOT (for 5.2 about 70% of complaints) of 'I got Red Hat from a cdrom out of a book, resale site, etc etc.. and I want my 30 days of support on your web-page.' People expected the name to mean what they read etc in news articles, on web pages, etc. So in the end, get a lawyer if you are concerned so that they can at least guide you through and your ass is covered. On Sun, 2002-12-22 at 06:00, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > (a couple more thoughts that occurred to me while getting > ready to head for the gym -- and i apologize for this clearly > being OT for this mailing list, but hey, someone else started > it ... :-) > > the more i think about it, the less i see how red hat can > keep people from using the name "red hat linux". > -- Stephen John Smoogen smoogen@xxxxxxxx Los Alamos National Labrador CCN-2 B-Schedule PH: Ta-03 SM-261 MailStop P208 DP 17U Los Alamos, NM 87545
