Linbot

[Erik Max Francis]

Quasimodo wrote:

> They're trademarking Linkbot, Metabot, Macrobot.  Hell if they tm the
> letters "bot" or even "robot" think of the money they could make
> suing, for
> example, movies that feature robots without licensing the term, etc.
> 
> Where will this stupidy end?

There are clearcut cases of abuse of the trademark system; this doesn't
sound like one of them.  Trademarks must be enforced in order to have
value; if a company holding a trademark doesn't fight off potential
infringers, then the next time another infringer comes along they can
use that as a defense.

In this case the software was LinkBot, and someone wrote a clone of it
and called it LinBot.  Uh, it's a little hard to claim that's not a
trademark problem.

Besides, the guy didn't get sued, didn't get told to give them his
software (which would be ridiculous); they just asked him to change the
name.  That seems quite reasonable, since the name is one letter away
from theirs _and is a self-admitted clone of their product_.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
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