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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

I'm intrigued by the decision to call it "Docs".

In any other circumstance it would be a clear trademark infringement on Google Docs. It's literally the same product with the same name, it has an extremely similar logo and almost exactly the same typeface in its logo.

But since this is a government project between France and Germany, maybe governments are allowed to ignore trademarks? Or Google wants to stay on their good side because of all the fines, so the last thing it's going to do is sue them for trademark infringement?

I've never seen a legal situation like this before.

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I guess that's the "problem" with generic product names. There's also Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, Microsoft Calendar etc. - Docs is not different than that.

"Docs" isn't that generic. It's not even a word in the dictionary. It's the plural of an abbreviation. Nobody called a word processor "Docs" before Google did.

If you say "open Calendar", I don't know if you mean Apple or Google or Microsoft. If you say "open Docs", I know it's Google and only Google.

This is no different than if the project called itself "Word", which would be equally confusing with Microsoft.

Neither Docs nor Word are genericized. They're both totally valid trademarks. Which is why naming this project "Docs" would be immediately shut down if any private organization tried it. And I've never heard of governments infringing private trademarks before, so I'm curious what's going on here.

Docs and Word are both generic words that need a qualification like Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Otherwise they could be Open Docs or Open Word (not sure if that exists, maybe Libre Word?).

Same with Books. It could be Google Books, Facebook, or Open Books.

> Otherwise they could be Open Docs or Open Word (not sure if that exists, maybe Libre Word?).

No, they couldn't. That's why there isn't any Open Docs or Libre Word word processor.

That's very specifically why it's Libre Writer. Why it's FreeOffice TextMaker. Why it's FocusWriter and Writemonkey and whatever else.

A major part of trademark law is likelihood of confusion. Both Docs and Word are associated so strongly with Google and Microsoft, that a judge is almost certainly going to side with them if you try to call your new word processor Docs or Word.

KWord is a thing, and the only reason it's not still under active development is because enthusiasm for development dried up after the acrimonious KOffice/Calligra split. In fact, it was the only part of the KOffice suite that was allowed to keep its name after the split.

And there's also AbiWord, which is still under active development.

Or speaking of which, all the gazillion office suites with Office in the name.

KWord and AbiWord don't use "Word" as a standalone, well, word. They're clearly not Word. You're not going to confuse them, and that's the point.

And "office" became the term for an office suite, the way "calendar" and "contacts" and "word processor" are just descriptive terms too.

But "Docs" and "Word" have a clear, obvious distinctiveness that "office" and "calendar" don't. "Word" and "Docs" don't inherently mean "word processor". Heck, OpenDocs.com is for legal forms, not word processing.

I really don't know what you're arguing. Go ahead, start a word processor named just "[Company name] Word" with the space and get sued by Microsoft and lose. You don't really think you'll win, do you? This is not a controversial or blurry area of trademark law.

isn't "Google Docs" the trademark https://about.google/brand-resource-center/trademark-list/ ?

That doesn't matter. It's about similarity and consumer confusion.

E.g. you can't launch an ice cream brand called "Haagen" or called "Dazs", even though the trademark is for "Haagen-Dazs".

Yeah if you want a strong trademark on your product, don’t call it "Docs"

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