Unix(tm) is a trademark...

[Joel West]

In article <895 at kitty.UUCP>, larry at kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) writes:
> 	Seriously though, I wonder why AT&T never registered the trademark;
> I would think that if AT&T was really serious about usage enforcement, they
> would have made the effort at registration.

I believe, since AT&T wasn't legally in the computer businness when they 
developed UNIX, they probably didn't want to/couldn't make overt acts towards
acting like they were.

No one doubts that AT&T has many well-paid lawyers.  The general consensus 
is that if AT&T could register the trademark, they would.

> 	"C3. The trademark UNIX may not be used in a hyphenated expression
> as `UNIX-based' or `UNIX-like.'"

I believe AT&T is trying to scare (convince) the UNIX community into
giving their unregistered trademark more protection than it has been
given in the past, in order to avoid having UNIX becoming a generic
(and thus unprotectable) term.  There are two interesting precedents:

	1. "Xerox", as in "xerox this for me, will you?"  The
	   Xerox Corp. ran a "public awareness" campaign about 3 years
	   ago, at the same time "TV Guide" did.  Both were aimed at
	   journalists in particular, because of:

	2. The Monsanto decision.  The word "Formica" was held by the
	   Supreme Court to be a generic term for laminated materials
	   (much like "aspirin") because Monsanto had not taken effort
	   to protect their product.

There's no problem, I believe, in calling something a "trademark of..."
as long as no one else has registered the term.  If two companies
have a similar, un-registered trademark, I don't know what happens.

Did I mention that the MacDonalds Corp. is suing all Macintosh
developers (including Apple) for use of the term 'Mac' as a modifier
in any product name (MacDraw, MacWrite, MacTutor, etc...)