Re: Never ever use word BitKeeper if Larry does not like you

[Stephen Satchell]

At 04:11 PM 3/14/03 +0000, Stephen C. Tweedie wrote:
> > Let's try a little simple substitution since you seem to be needing coffee
> > this morning:
> >
> >     "Red Cap: a proprietary Red Hat clone"
> >     "The goal of this system is to produce a system compatible with Red 
> Hat"
> >
> > Go run those statements by your lawyers, Alan, and then please report
> > what they said back here.
>
>I just did, and they said just what I'd expect from common sense.  A
>compatibility claim is, in principle, just fine.
>
>Specifically, any attempt to pass off something that didn't come from
>Red Hat as an official Red Hat product was verboten; but
>
>         I would distinguish this from someone who is promoting their own
>         product, let's call it BillyBob's Linux, and who makes a claim
>         that it is "compatible with Red Hat Linux."  So long as the
>         compatibility statement is not used prominently in the
>         advertising of the product and so long as the statement is, in
>         fact, true, this would likely constitute a fair use of our mark,
>         roughly along the lines of comparative advertising.

Disclaimer:  I am not a lawyer in any country.

I think, fellow Stephen, you are missing the point.  The example includes a 
trade name, "Red Cap" as the trademark for the new system.  Now, I am not a 
lawyer but I have been exposed to some of the seamer side of trademark 
disputes, and "Red Cap" may well fail the trademark confusion test as not 
being sufficiently different from the original trademark to avoid a person 
from mistaking "Red Cap" for "Red Hat".  The same, I assert, is true for 
"KitBeeper" and "BitKeeper".

To take Mr. McVoy's example and show how to distance the new trademark from 
the old one, let's look at your company name and Larry's straw man, "Red 
Hat."  Using that trusty writer's tool, the Thesaurus, we can come up with 
some less confusing new trademarks:

      Scarlet Cap
      Crimson Chapeau (I like this one because of the alliteration)
      Cherry Beanie
      Blood Crown
      Firehat
      Ruby Headdress
      Siena Skimmer

just to name a few.

So, what could be done for a working title of a project that is "compatible 
with BitKeeper(tm)" that would not fail the confusion test?

      Column A
      -------------
      Code
      Codex
      Opus
      Root
      Stem
      Matrix
      Nibble
      Byte (dangerous, as it could lead to a confusion claim)
      Two
      Twovalue

      Column B
      -------------
      Safe
      Fortress
      Holder
      Bastion
      Post
      Bank
      Stronghold
      Arranger
      Recorder
      Matrix (repeated here as a possible second word)
      Web

So, Pavel, take one from Column A, and one from Column B, and you have 
candidate trademark names for your BitKeeper workalike, if you want to do 
that much of a stretch.

I also through out these possibilities:  NBK  (Not Bit Keeper), NBKsafe, 
SourceNBK, CodeNBK, ByteNBK, and so forth.  To further drive the joke 
"inside" try NBic, SourceNBic, and so forth.  (I don't recall the pen 
company selling source control software, so the only claim that the Bic 
company sould make is trademark dilution -- your lawyer would best 
determine if that is a possibility.)

To take it to the absurd, call your clone AJ or CL; it worked for Kubric 
with the HAL 9000 in the movie, with IBM building much of the facade and 
even allowing the use of its trademark typeface.

The third option is to forget the nonsense of building on the BitKeeper 
name and come up with a name that best describes the functionality of what 
you are doing, or (common) use the initials of the primary developers or 
investors.

Interestingly enough, there was a discussion on a private mailing list I 
subscribe to that was discussing the shortcoming of CVS and other source 
management tools.   I don't recall enough of the discussion to inject it 
here; many of the participants on that list also read LKML, so they could 
chime in with their ideas themselves.  Try to think of real-life projects, 
and how your source repository can simplify jobs commonly encountered when 
trying to maintain a product.

I'll shut up now.

Satch

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