Python Trademark Filer Ignorant Of Python? | Hacker News Reader

Python Trademark Filer Ignorant Of Python?

blogs.computerworlduk.com

64 pointsaurelianito24 comments

A lot of programmers in my dinky third-world country haven't heard of Python or Ruby - most folks here think web development begins with Java and ends with PHP.

That said, I think that CEO is full of shit.

It's one thing for a programmer not to know about the existence of Python, but it's another thing entirely for sysadmins not to know (their websites run Debian). To make matters worse they are trying to develop their own cloud platform, so they would need somewhat more sophisticated sysadmins than if they were just hosting a simple PHP website.

I would guess that at some point one of the developers/sysadmins brought up the fact that their name conflicted with an open source programming language, and management choose to ignore them.

No technical staff were consulted at all:

  Tim confirmed that he'd not involved any technical staff
  in the decisions he'd made about the Python product brand,
  and told me he regretted that as it would probably have
  helped him understand the likely reaction to his trademark
  challenge.

In a quick Google search http://www.google.com/search?q=python&pws=0 (I hope I've killed personalization correctly.) the Python-language gets 9 of the first 10 places, and the Python-snake gets only one place and the news section at the bottom.

IANAL, but I think the PSF's trademark is on very shaky ground.

CMU Common Lisp has had an innovative, high-performance compiler called Python since before van Rossum invented the scripting language. A Common Lisp compiler and a programming language are, seems to me, very much in the same market space; I do not think the PSF could successfully argue in court that they do not overlap -- certainly not at the same time they were arguing that a cloud service does overlap a scripting language.

I'm sure van Rossum was unaware of CMUCL's Python when he named his language. But that doesn't matter in trademark law; you don't get to claim a trademark someone else is already using just because you didn't know about them.

And I believe that using a mark that was already in use gives you a very weak claim, if any, to your trademark.

CMUCL is, by the way, still in use.

But that's fine right. As long as no one else gets the trademark, then the PSF is happy. Or do I have it wrong?

From the article:

But when at the start of 2012 the PSF heard that POBox intended to launch a product called "Python Cloud" they were alarmed, since Python is widely used in this area. The new product posed a real risk of confusing the public, so the PSF wrote to POBox in January 2012 asking them not to do this and pointing out the PSF registered US trademark.

POBox retaliated by filing the trademark registration application, but the PSF fired the first shot in this battle, trying to keep POBox from using the name.

If the PSF's attempt to save someone the costs and time of a filing challengeable trademark application counts as "firing the first shot", I'd hate to see a "pre-emptive strike."

Irrelevant. If you don't defend a "Trademark", any rights you have to it go away. You're required to DEFEND your Trademark to keep ownership -- and even if you have a common-law Trademark (which is what you're claiming CMUCL has on "Python"), if you allow someone else to register a Trademark at the federal level and fail to oppose the registration, you can lose your rights that way.

IANAL, but I've read a lot about Trademark law, and I've talked to more than one IP attorney about it. For reference, see for example [1] and [2]. It's not like patent law where prior art can invalidate a bad patent. It's defend-it-or-lose-it.

[1] http://www.blackweb20.com/2009/11/25/the-consequences-of-not...

[2] http://www.adlilaw.com/importance-of-monitoring-your-tradema...

You're missing my point. I'm not suggesting at all that the CMUCL developers would want to stop the PSF from using the name Python. That would be the situation that your argument is relevant to.

No, I'm making quite a different point, about the ability of the PSF to stop anyone else from using the name. In order to be able to assert trademark rights against someone else, you have to have a valid trademark to begin with. If your use of the mark was never exclusive to begin with, I don't see how you can claim to have an exclusive right to it now.

Perhaps in the US, since the PSF has registered the mark and the CMUCL people didn't contest it (in time), the PSF now has an exclusive right to it. Although here another point comes into play: I've never heard of the PSF attempting to prevent CMUCL from using the name. Supposing they haven't, a case can now be made that the PSF has failed to defend it and therefore has lost their exclusive right to it. So I think that can cut both ways. CMUCL has no exclusive right to the name -- I seriously doubt they care -- but if some third party started to use it, I wonder if the PSF could prevail over the latter in court.

But all that aside, this case is in the EU, where as far as I understand, the PSF has no registered trademark anyway. I think POBox Hosting could make a very strong case that, since CMUCL's Python has certainly been used in the EU, the PSF has no exclusive right to the name there.

I'm pretty sure they would be fine with stopping anyone from having an exclusive trademark, as a second prize. Because you know, the company in the EU is trying for an exclusive trademark. So, maybe they loose the best option, but win when they don't have to rename everything because it violates someone's exclusive mark?

See my reply to Volpe below.

Wow you are a total shill. Obviously PSF is acting hostilely as you are insinuating, because they wanted to minimize confusion, or maybe they just wanted to minimize confusion.

I am not a shill. I am a longtime user of CMUCL and its now-more-popular fork, SBCL. The name collision has been an annoyance for years -- I always have to qualify which Python I'm talking about. This hardly minimizes confusion.

So nobody gets the trademark and we carry on. The problem is a land-grab by a private company wishing to sew up the word 'python' as it relates to computers and software all across the EU.

Regardless of whether or not he had hear of Python (which I find very unlikely), if one planned to register a trademark, one would have to do some research in the first place. And that would involve a google search at the very least. And at least on my results even the bloody _real_ Python (snake) shows up first a dozen or so pages back after only Python (language) links. And his dinky little company never comes up. So, yeah. Pretty obvious he's lying - or very, very dumb. Either way it does not show him in a good light and not as someone I'd like to do business with.

It's hard to believe a cloud storage company was really as ignorant of Python as they claim.

Let's hope they drop the claim, and we can all move on with our lives.

I'm sorry, the CEO's position is ludicrous.

Which business leader, in this day and age, hasn't tried to google their own company's brand name to see what comes up?

Oh...what are these pages upon pages of stuff about Python (programming language) which shows up when I type Python, Python Hosting, or Python UK...

Nope..never heard of Python (PSF), nope...not me...nope...

Find it interesting that Veber are portrayed as the victim, in this piece from the Register here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/19/python_versus_veber_...

Would expect better reporting and questioning from El Reg.

Wow ... I knew the English language was capable of such a construction but I never thought I'd read "expect better reporting and questioning from El Reg"[The Register]

The Register (and The Inquirer after it) ported the classic British tabloid format to tech reporting, all I'd expect from El Reg is sarcasm, climate change denial and exclamation marks.

I wonder if part of their problem is that they will get sued for poBOX cloud software and Storage -- since there's already another player with a very similar name in the exact same market. ( http://box.com/ )

A fine example of backpedalling and talking shit.

Standard double-speak ... if you can't get away with something, you hope to get out of it without problems. I won't defend those who are implementing the DDOS, but I do hope it's a warning to others who have the opportunity to "play nice". I believe that OSS and corporations can coexist (sorry RMS).

> I believe that OSS and corporations can coexist (sorry RMS).

RMS doesn't disagree with corporations (the FSF is a corporation) or even with commercial use of software (the freedom to use software for commercial purposes is explicitly included as a fundamental freedom of software).

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