Hacker News Reader

Comment by sigzero | Hacker News Reader

That's "HyperTerminal" not "HyperTerm".

A very similar name for a product sitting in the same space (terminal emulator). That's generally an unwise decision as it can create confusion for both projects, and the one with the trademark (especially since this new one's name is a substring of the older project) is in a position to make a valid claim against the new project.

If someone created a new project called Steem to deliver video games to end users[, would you] be surprised if Valve took issue with their choice of name?

EDIT: Left out part of a sentence.

> if Valve took issue

isn't it true that companies have to take issue, otherwise they lose their trademark? I used to be angry when large corporations would sue a little guy or nonprofit over name squabbles, but then I heard that the big company can lose their trademark if they dont.

That's my understanding as well, yes.

For an example of this happening, "Aspirin" was originally a Bayer trademark registered in 1897.

I probably heard the same thing as you. With the whole Scrolls fiasco, I think. Someone explained Bethesda had to go after Mojang.

Anyone remember this?

> On February 20, 2004, the developers of wxWindows announced that the project was changing its name to wxWidgets, as a result of Microsoft requesting Julian Smart to respect Microsoft's United Kingdom trademark of the term Windows. [1]

That being said, I think if MS doesn't ask them to change it, there isn't much to worry about. "wxWindows" was originally started in 1992.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WxWidgets

IIRC, Microsoft licensed Hyperterminal from a company called Hilgraeve (sp?). It was never an official part of Windows, although IMHO it should have been.

Regardless of who owns/owned the trademarks in whatever countries, it's not appropriate to reuse the name. It will lead to unnecessary confusion. Bad call, even if no lawyers get involved.

HyperTerminal was commonly referred to as "HyperTerm" in the BBS community, probably because the executable was hypertrm.exe. Also possibly because most other dial-up terminal emulators had names ending in "Term".

The free version was bundled with Windows for 10+ years, and although it wasn't a particularly great terminal, its ubiquity came in handy when trying to bring new people into the bulletin board system world.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com