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Comment by otterley | Hacker News Reader

That name sounds descriptive, which could be a problem with respect to trademark protection. (Descriptive names are more difficult to protect.)

I'm frankly surprised the lawyers signed off on it.

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"The Linux Foundation protects the public and Linux users from unauthorized and confusing uses of the trademark and authorizes proper uses of the mark through an accessible sublicensing program. The Linux Foundation offers a free, perpetual, world-wide sublicense to approved sublicense applicants. In return, the sublicensee holders must agree not to challenge Linus Torvalds' ownership of the Linux mark in any jurisdiction, and to provide proper attribution of ownership on their goods, services and elsewhere. The Linux Sublicense Agreement is available for review."

https://www.linuxmark.org/

The parent meant that they could protect CoreOS (http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4805:a60...), but might not be able to acquire trademark for Container Linux, because "container" is a descriptive term. Like, you can protect "Colgate", but not "White tooth paste". Pretty sure, though, they know what they were doing and consulted lawyers :)

Linux is a trademark, toothpaste is not, that's the difference. You could definitely trademark "Black Colgate", "Ubuntu Linux" and "container linux", the latter two via the Linux sublicensing program the comment above yours linked to. IANAL.

The sublicense agreement just means you get to use Linux in your name. It doesn't mean you get to protect your new name with your own trademark. That's up to the law.

As a (non practicing) lawyer, I would have said "oh hell no."

But that's the thing about lawyers; you can find one to agree with you on anything if you look hard enough.

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