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Comment by sghi | Hacker News Reader

This is what they're (Infinit) are already doing, isn't it? I can see why they might be a little annoyed at the name Infinite, but it's not like infinite is an unreasonable name for Dropbox to pick for their project...

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With trademark, the test for a new name depends on whether the name can cause confusion with an existing trademark. When it's the same industry then it's pretty cut-and-dried in favor of the existing mark owner.

Reasonability of the name has nothing to do with whether or not Dropbox can use "Project Infinite". That's the point that Dropboxe makes. Dropbox can either fight that name (which really, they must or lose their own mark meaning anyone can use "Dropbox") and lose their Project Infinite name as well.

I think they're being a little silly. If you use a relatively mainstream word from the language in which you do business (and which happens to be virtually identical in all languages anywhere near where you do do business), you don't (shouldn't) have a leg to stand on, IMO. You can't reasonably arrive at Dropboxe independently. But is everyone at Dropbox really supposed to tip-toe around being careful not to name a project after a common word if it's pronounced the same as a company that was accepted to a tech incubator just 2 years ago?

Parent was saying the "Dropbox" is also a generic word.

> If you use a relatively mainstream word from the language in which you do business

What about "Windows"? Or "Word"? Or "Office"? It's difficult to find words that are more "mainstream" than that. Yet, Microsoft does just fine.

Yeah and if Microsoft made tongue-in-cheek blog posts about IBM because they had something called "Project Officer" we'd all roll our eyes.

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