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Comment by scintill76 | Hacker News Reader

In the US at least, I believe trademarks are scoped to a certain industry or something like that. So Microsoft would only have claim to operating systems named Windows, not the word itself in all contexts. Which might still be a bit broad, but not as crazy as it may sound at first.

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This is true everywhere.

In fact, this app is for "Downloadable computer software for modifying and enabling transmission of images, audio-visual and video content; downloadable computer software for viewing and interacting with a feed of images, audio-visual and video content and associated text and data; computer software for social networking. "

The third category is especially problematic, but all of these have common words that end in -gram or -graph.

Hmm, this app sounds like a browser to me.

something like that, yeah.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer

though, in your example, i'd have to wager the Windows trademark extends way further than just "operating systems". "computing" at large seems more likely.

Went down a rabbit hole and ended up with Guy Goma's famous BBC interview on the verdict of Apple Corp vs Apple Computer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Goma

https://vimeo.com/108900641

Though this isn't necessarily true if the trademark was originally a made-up word. You couldn't open a burger restaurant called "Microsoft Burgers" and expect to get away with it because Microsoft isn't in the restaurant business.

You actually very well could why do you think you couldn't?

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