David Cournapeau wrote:
On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 1:56 PM, Robert Pyle <rpyle@post.harvard.edu> wrote:
Hi,
While I agree that toydist needs a new name, Bento might not be a good choice. It's already the name of a database system for Macintosh from Filemaker, an Apple subsidiary. I'd be *very* surprised if the name Bento is not copyrighted.
Can you copyright a word ? I thought this was the trademark part of the law. For example, "linux" is a trademark owned by Linus Torvald. Also, well known packages use words which are at least as common as bento in English (sphinx, twisted, etc...), and as likely to be trademarked. But IANAL...
There's been lots of discussions about this on the Sage list, since there's lots of software called Sage. It seems that the consensus of IANAL advice on that list is that as long as they're not competing in the same market they're OK. For instance, there's been some talk about whether it's OK to include economics utilities in Sage since there's an accounting software (?) called Sage -- that sort of thing. Thanks for your work David, I'll make sure to check it out soon! Dag Sverre