On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, Nik Frengle wrote:
> My suggestion would be to just use text: You may
> be violating trademarks, but no one seems to mind.
I'm not familiar with Japanese trademark law, but I'd suspect, what
with WIPO and all, trademark law has certain commonalities worldwide.
In the US and Canada, at least, as I understand it, you are never,
ever violating trademark law when you use a trademark to refer to the
specific thing that's trademarked. If I'm talking about "Coke," the
drink manufactured by the Coca-cola company, and I make it clear that
"Coke" is a trademark (registered or not--it doesn't matter), there's no
violation.
The point of trademark law is not to prevent people from using the
trademark, but to prevent people from using the trademark to refer
to something other than the owner wants it to refer to. It's not
like copyright, that prevents usage or copying. You can't copyright
a word or small set of words used as a trademark (though you can
copyright an image used as a trademark, I believe).
cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs_at_cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC
Received on Tue Sep 10 05:06:37 2002