Hacker News Reader

Comment by tialaramex | Hacker News Reader

> You have to protect trademarks or you lose them.

Not really. How do you imagine this could work if it was true? It's a great excuse if you're looking to throw your weight around of course. Oh the poor Disney corporation had to sue that primary school for a bajillion dollars, or else they would lose their trademark. Does that sort of thing even pass the sniff test for you?

And it works out great for lawyers too. Instead of only getting paid when there's actual controversy that needs their skills, they can collect a fee for this "protection" work.

View on HN

Sadly that's indeed how trademark law works - if you don't make even a token effort at enforcing your rights, they can become common names and effectively be lost.

That doesn't mean one should rabidly go after every single possible infringing use, obviously, which is what the infamous drafted Rust policy kinda did. It's one of those things that are just not black and white, because laws say one thing ("be harsh all of the time") and actual mores around enforcement say another ("leave people alone when they're clearly in good faith").

Name one open source programming language that has its trademark policies like Rust.

I don't know why people read my post as a defense of Rust policies - I just said they are at the extreme end of the spectrum, that's not an endorsement.

> Sadly that's indeed how trademark law works - if you don't make even a token effort at enforcing your rights, they can become common names and effectively be lost.

Can they? Give me examples of such trademarks being lost.

Do make sure to check your examples. Maybe you heard say that Xerox lost their trademark. Nope, Xerox® is still a registered trademark of Xerox.

> That doesn't mean one should rabidly go after every single possible infringing use

If this protection is somehow mandatory, why not? How do I check whether I'm "protecting" a trademark enough? Maybe there's a meter somewhere? Is there a scale? What are the units of trademark protection? If there was such a rule, we'd have answers to these questions. There is no such rule.

"Lost" meaning that one loses the right to stop others from using the genericized brand, not meaning that the trademark ceases to exist.

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

The best case for the genericization argument in that list might be Lineoleum, but Lineoleum wasn't even a registered trademark. So that's literally the story: Guy invents Lineoleun. Product is popular, other people make the same product under the same name, he's not very happy about that so he goes to court and says hey, that's my trademark. No it isn't, you don't have a trademark.

If it becomes generic it might as well be, but that's not the issue here. Anyway, the parent post has a google jd in trademark law and doesn't know what he's talking about, but you can't enforce your TM the same way, or if at all, if has become generic. The main way you lose tm rights is by not using the mark.

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

You might want to check your blood pressure.

EFF has some good writing on the subject: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not...

Well, that's not exactly how it works. You don't even need to register a trademark to have common law rights to avoid source confusion. You have to use the mark though or you lose the rights, that much is true. But the only way you lose the right to enforce altogether is if you have some kind of unregistered mark and let it expire. And even if everything you said was exactly right, they still don't have to enforce the trademark in every case to protect their rights. As long as they keep making Rust, they own the rights to call a programming language Rust and they have the right to be identified as the official source and as long as they perfect their rights, they can use it to stop others from using it in certain cases, if they want. There's not really a "waiver" issue except in edge cases. Things only become "common names" in the case (or at least it used to be) that they become generic terms in the language, like "Hey, go xerox this, get me a kleenex, and then google something." Rust will never be able to expand its mark quite like that because it is a generic term in other uses, such as iron oxide. They will not be able to control the production of iron oxide or who calls it rust. So the whole "that's just how this works" defense is either one given by an apologist or someone who is just wrong.

Are you asking me to defend Disney's actions because I side with Rust at this point?

I think that it is fair that someone defends their name and brand and I definitely wish that you be permitted to do so, so that someone is unable to be too untoward to your business.

You keep making the claim that trademark enforcement is about protection against bad actors, but that is emphatically false here. Rust's trademark policy is extremely restrictive, to the point that Rust the language can only be considered proprietary. If you haven't read it, it's here: https://foundation.rust-lang.org/policies/logo-policy-and-me...

They aren't using trademark to defend against malicious actors. They're using trademark to segregate and divide the Rust community into those who are "officially part of the Rust community" (their words) and those who aren't.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com