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[News] Bill McEwen on Trademarks and SDK AvailabilityANN.lu
Posted on 31-May-2000 06:42 GMT by Christian Kemp55 comments
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There is a new Executive Update dated May 30,2000 on Amiga's homepage. To quote their own summary of it, Bill Mcewen, President of Amiga, affirms Amiga's commitment to defending its trademarks and patents, while offering much-anticipated information about Amiga's forthcoming development kits.
Bill McEwen on Trademarks and SDK Availability : Comment 53 of 55ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 01-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
Don't worry guys. If Amiga Inc. continues that way the 'Amiga' name will just mean a good laugh and will be used on jokes sites.
Bill McEwen on Trademarks and SDK Availability : Comment 54 of 55ANN.lu
Posted by Ralph Schmidt on 01-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 42 (the VideoDoc):
So..if i follow you here closely *nobody* is really secure ?
In my book this is a clear "threat" against anybody using the
name amiga in whatever context.
From people using it in its website name to people which use
the name amiga(os) to describe some abilitities of a different
product like.
"It runs on top of amigaos" or
"It emulates amigaos" and
"It runs amigaos programs".
So the only valid consequence out of this threat is to replace
every amiga string with something like
"Symbol...formerly known as a CBM 68k OS" as
"***** sadly trademarked by ***** Inc." isn`t enough to be
protected against some "potential" amiga inc lawyer mob.
Or do i miss something here ?
P.S. CBM,AT,AI/G didn`t really care for its name usage for
*15* years so how can this name now be protected again ?
If i follow the schizophren trademark protection advised
by lawyers in the US then this trademark isn`t valid anymore
as it was never really defended.
Bill McEwen on Trademarks and SDK Availability : Comment 55 of 55ANN.lu
Posted by Christian Kemp on 01-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 54 (Ralph Schmidt):
Indeed. I am certainly not a lawyer, but if there is a law in the US that
states that trademarks that are not enforced for several years can be freely
used, how can the trademark "Amiga" ever been taken serious again after it
was allowed to be used by many, many Internet sites for several years, and by
online mags, stores, software producers for up to 15 years now, without any
permission whatsoever required?
I'm glad that my URL doesn't contain the word "Amiga". Words on the site can
be quickly changed should the need arise. But what about amiga-news.de?
amigau.com? amigacentral.com? To name just a few. To a lesser extent, what
about Moo Bunny or Czech Amiga News, who just carry an "Amiga" directory on a
neutral domain?
It would be interesting to hear more from Amiga on this topic. What are the
requirements if you want to license the usage of the name, or the logo for your
site? Will you need to pay a fixed amount, a percentage, or nothing? Sign any special documents, or just send an informal request?
Bill McEwen on Trademarks and SDK Availability : Comment 52 of 55ANN.lu
Posted by John Millington on 01-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
Christian, just a few thoughts regarding how this relates to ANN and other
Amiga news sites:
1) You are NOT selling a service that anyone could ever mistake for
Amiga Inc's products. If you were pushing a new platform and labelled
it as the "new Amiga" then this could apply to you. (In fact, I think
that projects like AROS, Phoenix, and MorphOS are the things that are
truly threatened by this announcement, not Amiga news/discussion sites.)
2) If they try to offer you a "free" license, it wouldn't hurt to go ahead
and approach the idea with a TimRue-level of paranoia. What I'm specifically
concerned about is that the terms of the license may place restrictions on
what you are allowed to say (e.g. can't run any stories that disparage
Amiga Inc). Read carefully before signing anything. I would rather
that ANN changed its name to remove the "Amiga" reference, than compromise
it's integrity for the sake of mentioned a trademarked word or checkered
image. Images and Words are expendable, thoughts and speech are not.
Bill McEwen on Trademarks and SDK Availability : Comment 51 of 55ANN.lu
Posted by szutoman on 01-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 50 (Anonymous):
I my opion, I feel that Amiga Inc, in favor of those Amiga developers that have stuck it out through think and thin and are still developing, should get the developers package free. These people will provide the foundation and the software that will help feed the NEW Amiga Market and move it to the next level of acceptance. I feel that Amiga Classic developers, from a marketing stand-point, will bring forth the feeling and talent of their software to the next level. For those who say this is unfair, really it is not. It's savy and smart pr that will bring new developers to the Amiga Arena, and because of this, the Calssic Amiga developers, we will retain the Amiga style and philospy that made the classic Amiga so great. We want all Amiga developers to develop for the New Amiga OS(Elate). The last thing we want is somone outside setting the standard, although this could be benifcial, I would prefer companies like Nova, Audiolabs, Softlogic, Eyelight(if they are still around), Newtek(If they even care anymore) and all the others to set the syandard. Why, because these companies have kick ass products and development standards that are in a class of there own.
Just a few thoughts
szutoman
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