On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 10:08 AM, Michal Schmidt <mschmidt@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: [snip] > Of course. But there's in fact no disagreement, only looking at > different aspects of the same thing. > > Why do you think the copying takes place? Because the companies have > built a good reputation and brand, allowing them to increase profit. > > Good quality => good reputation => solid brand => better profits. > > Then copyists try to get better profits too without bothering to > build their own good reputation, by deceiving the buyers into thinking > the original company with good reputation produced their goods. > > I'm really quite surprised about this thread. Of all the stuff > often put under the confusing term "intellectual property" I expected > trademarks to be the least controversial. Exactly. I often describe trademarks as a kind of consumer protection lawâ but instead of using the blunt tool of government driven enforcement it relies on the existence of an interested party (the trademark holder) to provide the protection at their own expense with enforcement via civil law. This has advantages (it's very flexible, enforcement can be made to match the need, the public doesn't need to pay for it directly) and disadvantages (it suffers if the interested party is either not interested enough or too interested), but regardless it's pretty much something categorically different from, say, patents... which have no consumer-protective properties and which are very difficult to escape (compared to changing a package name/branding). -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
