I'm surprised that "JavaScript" has not become a generic trademark [0]. Examples from the Wikipedia article include Thermos, Chapstick, and Dumpster.
My guess is Oracle would only do the latter, and that they're doing it because some lawyer thinks that Oracle has to do this to demonstrate that it is defending the mark even though that's nonsense if they don't go after notable unlicensed uses of their mark.
Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to a corporate lawyer.
"Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to a corporate lawyer."
Shall we call it Cryptonector's Razor? You invented it, you name it :)
edit: someone else (not me) should name the principle that explains why so few people on HN have any sense of humor whatsoever.
I think lots of people have sense of humor, but it's accepted here in very limited amount (and preferably when it's clever humor). I'd attribute this to HN being one of the few remaining places on the Internet where you can discuss serious/interesting stuff without immediately drowning in effort-free jokes and memes - and people want to keep it that way. Hence, the word I'd be looking for might be "oversensitivity".
As to the HN-has-little-humor phenomenon, well, some people seem to think that dry == authoritative. That's BS, of course, but I don't know what to call that. I'll think about it.
Are corporate lawyers not the physical manifestation of malice itself?
My wife is a corporate lawyer, so ive seen a little bit of these shenanigans from her perspective. And it pretty much boils down to this: there are certain risks lawyers can take and keep their jobs, and risks they will lose their jobs over. Like everyone else, they do not enjoy unemployment.
Saying “this business idea is fine, go for it” and it succeeds? They get no credit. Saying “I don’t think this is legal,” ugh, lawyers are always too cautious, but its par for the course sonit doesn’t reflect badly on them. Saying “go for it” and get nailed in an enforcement action? Unemployed and unemployable.
Likewise, when it comes to protecting IP, as required by law. They can’t -not- do it: it’s their job, explicitly, to protect the IP. Deciding “we will not pursue the correct course of legal action to (legally) protect our clients rights to protect their branding” isn’t in their purview, that belongs to the execs (who Are the ones that make those decisions). Any lawyer that decided that on their own? They’d better hope it -never- has -any- consequences, because... unemployed and unemployable.
It’s easy to blame lawyers for protecting their clients rights, but all they do is navigate the system. They don’t make the system[1], and they don’t pull the trigger
[1] there is a meme that lawyers build the legal system, as opposed to, you know, legislators, lobbyists, special interest groups, etc. I find it poorly related to reality.
How to defend a trademark is also a business decision. Dollars to donuts says that Oracle's corporate lawyers have "defend Oracle IP" as a generic goal, and that they know that suing a big player over infringement of their JavaScript (tm) mark would be the sort of business decision that requires senior executive approval, but sending out cease&desist letters to nobodies almost certainly requires no executive approval. This is standard corporate organization and operation. But this too is how you get into PR problems, for example, and corporate lawyers don't really think about that.
Now, whether Oracle should or should not be taking these actions to defend the JavaScript (tm) mark -- I don't know. That's their business, and it's a business decision. That the law and courts don't look askance at small-scale enforcement of rapidly-becoming-generic marks is a completely separate problem for some other day. Corporate lawyers should make sure that this is what the business wants. If Oracle as a business has decided that this is what it wants, fine, and I'm ready to believe that they have, but I find it a lot easier to believe that this is just a small decision made by their legal department in something of a vacuum.
When I said “defend as required by law,” I meant “defend the IP in the specific manner dictated by our laws,” not that one is obligated to defend it at all. Eg, suing people to prevent IP from becoming generic is the defense that is recognized in our legal tradition - thus, if they are to defend it, the conservative must follow this route.
It's absolutely clear that suing, say, Google, over JavaScript mark misuse would be a big deal business decision at Oracle, while sending a cease&desist letter over some piddly app in the iOS store is almost certainly not. But there is a cost to the latter, in that it destroys goodwill to be overly and unnecessarily aggressive in enforcement of a mark that arguably is now generic. This should be a business decision, not a legal one.
Justice has always been for sale. What's happened is that the price has increased to the point where most of us can't afford it.
The community would call the FOSS build system "snot" and the linter "nosebleed".
If Kleenex = Java and Kleenex Dispenser = javascript, your argument is wrong.
https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/8d0bg2/oracle_o...
Kleenex = JavaScript
Kranky Kim's Kleenex Keeper = Blue Mountain JavaScript Percolator
Kleenex is probably a bad example, because Kleenex has actually defended their trademark. At least I don't think Kranky Kim could actually use Kleenex in her product name.
I think the legal argument for the genericized meaning of "javascript" is valid and could be argued, in that you ciuld show that it's reasonable for anyone to think it was merely a noun and not a trademark. But the argument would take more years and money than any individual developer has.
Which begs the question: Is there any such thing as a class action but for defense instead of lawsuit? Oracle could snuff out a million app developers individually without ever even having to so much as appear once in court. Just send these letters. But could a million developers act as a class in a defense the way they could in an action?
Adobe is worried about protecting Photoshop as people use the word as a verb for editing photos in other apps. Kimberly-Clark is worried about protecting Kleenex as people use the word as substitute for other tissues (at least in the U.S.) And Velcro is worried about protecting their namesake (it’s a hook and loop).
People don’t typically confuse other scripting languages or web technologies for JavaScript. The reason Oracle cares here is not to protect the JavaScript brand. Instead, it’s to protect the Java brand, which people do confuse with other languages (or at least with JavaScript).
LEGO is the singular and the plural form. Thus "a LEGO brick" and "the LEGO bricks" are valid sentences. That's why some choose to correct Americas on their use of "legos." It has nothing to do with trademark law.
It's not quite the same as sheep/sheeps. Saying "there are 2 sheep in the field" is fine but saying "there are 2 Lego on the floor" still sounds a bit weird. You would have to use "there are 2 Lego bricks on the floor".
It's because Lego is an uncountable noun, like rice or sand. E.g. "there are 2 grains of rice on the floor" is fine but "there are 2 rice on the floor" is not. Saying "there are 2 rices on the floor" sounds very bad, and is the equivalent to using "Legos" instead of "Lego bricks".