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Comment by codetrotter | Hacker News Reader

Indeed. When they said:

> The unauthorized display of our client's intellectual property is likely to cause consumers encountering this app to mistakenly believe that it emanates from, or is provided under a license from, Oracle.

I think most of us would agree that no, literally almost no one familiar with JavaScript would have believed that app to “emanate from, or be provided under a license from, Oracle”.

I know that Oracle owns Java, but I never would have guessed that they had any ownership of the JavaScript name. When I think of JS, Oracle is like the last company I would think of.

When I think of JS, I think of Brendan Eich, Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, web development, Node.js, etc.

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I believe trademark laws require trademark holders to actively enforce them or they run the risk of losing the trademark when it comes up in something that actually matters.

Although really Oracle should have the sense to see the state of the landscape and just drop it. It's become a generic term - in fact, it always was.

If it's the case that by not going after the user of JavaScript, they would be putting their Java trademark in peril, then perhaps a solution would be for oracle to put out a notice putting the term JavaScript under a creative commons commerical non-attribution license.

That way, they keep everything 'java' protected, without the poor PR of targeting the use of the term 'JavaScript'.

Trademark is not the same thing as copyright. A work might be affected by both, but "put it under a CC license" does nothing to make the trademark freely usable. To make the trademark freely usable, they simply have to abandon it or create a liberal trademark policy like Mozilla's or Wikimedia's (or even CCs).

(IANAL.)

I am primarily a JavaScript developer by trade and I literally didn't know it even originated at Oracle. And I'm sure I'm not alone. The trademark should be invalidated.

It didn't originate there, they acquired the rights to the name when they bought sun

I believe they acquired the rights to 'Java' and they're arguing that gives them the rights to 'JavaScript'.

Which is fair-ish -- it should have never been named Javascript to begin with.

No, Oracle owns the "JavaScript" trademark, it's separate from "Java".

http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=75026640&caseType=SERIAL_N...

I knew that about Java but I didn't know the same was true of JavaScript

JavaScript originated at Netscape, not Sun. I assume Sun owned the trademark because it's so close to Java)

" When I think of JS, Oracle is like the last company I would think of." - Check out Oracle JET (JavaScript Toolkit), it's an open source library for modern web developers : https://github.com/oracle/oraclejet

Which no 'modern' web developer would go anywhere near!

What the hell is this...

LOL

Google taught everybody a lesson, avoid Oracle products.

Wait, Oracle? On GITHUB? Now I have seen everything...

I assume it's some kind of preemptive move, before they sue Github.

I think you're accidentally proving the point you're attempting to debunk.

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