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I really don't know what happened over there at Groupon: http://gnome.groupon.com/#intro/index

Did they truly not know? Did they just think the Gnome project wouldn't care? That they'll win the lawsuit?

Trademarks aren’t universal; they are divided into classifications e.g. market segments. Just because the name is the same, doesn't mean the PTO will think of them as being in the same space.

Groupon’s product is a tablet based point of sale “operating system for merchants to run their entire operation."

Could be close enough... This is no Vax vs Vax.

Also for a lot of people the shell is the OS. So yeah. A big criteria about trademarks - customer confusion is plausible here.

Did you read the article? Here are some of the goods and services covered by GNOME's registered mark:

- downloadable computer software for creating and managing a computer desktop

- downloadable computer software for use as a graphical user interface

- technical consulting services in the field of computer software

whereas the Groupon product is "a tablet based point of sale operating system for merchants to run their entire operation." Except I'm pretty sure they mean "operating system" in the plain-english sense, not the "computers" sense. Groupon could apparently avoid infringing in the goods categories by not making its PoS app downloadable, but it's hard to imagine it not infringing in the category "technical consulting services".

And yeah, going just from my own idiosyncratic views of the world... a PoS app for tablets does not differ significantly, in terms of what it is, from desktop software for PCs. Here's some coverage from 2012 of an effort to get GNOME software to run on android: http://lwn.net/Articles/510465/

The groupon trademark application (linked elsewhere in the thread) specifically mentions "non-downloadable" before every mention of "software".

It does however mention "technical support services" relating to computer software.. is that sufficiently different than consulting services?

I strongly suspect that the totemic use of "non-downloadable" before "software" in the Groupon filings is related to this piece from the article:

> It was almost inconceivable to us that Groupon, with over $2.5 billion in annual revenue, a full legal team and a huge engineering staff would not have heard of the GNOME project, found our trademark registration using a casual search, or even found our website, but we nevertheless got in touch with them and asked them to pick another name. Not only did Groupon refuse, but it has now filed even more trademark applications

I always thought that was more theoretical than real. For instance, could I launch an OS called CocaCola? I don't think so...

Google launched one called KitKat, so I don't see why not. ;)

Google did it with the willing cooperation of the trademark holder [1], who clearly saw it as good marketing.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23926938

It seems very much real.

Someone once wrote me menacing to sue me because of my nickname which was infringing on some of their "IP" (I kid you not).

I did a quick check and it turns out there is a half dozen brands named something like "riffraff".

For the gnome case, just to stay in topic: http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=4809%3Ao...

"GNOME: hosting software for use by others for accessing weather information, for use in monitoring and controlling irrigation systems"

My understanding is the outcome of the Apple Computer vs Apple Corps series of legal battles[0] was consistent with trademarks being siloed into market segments.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer

Apple is a common word. I doubt I could launch CocaColaOS.

It's quite real, but there are some marks which are so well-known (like Coca Cola) that they can argue that the use of the mark in any context is likely to cause consumer confusion.

If you did launch an OS called CocaCola, they would argue that there would be some confusion in the mind of the reasonable consumer as to whether there was some association with the soft drink manufacturer.

No, it's real. If it wasn't, the GNOME Foundation would have not been able to trademark GNOME, since that has been a registered trademark of The Lake County Nursery in Perry, Ohio since 1980. They use it for some line of flowers they sell, I believe.

Note that the word gnome existed before the first company that used it as a product name came around. Not so with CocaCola. That word came into existence for a product, and it is also the name of the company that produces the product. That makes it a lot harder to successfully argue that using it on, say, an OS would not cause confusion.

There's a brand of cola called Ubuntu FWIW.

> For instance, could I launch an OS called CocaCola?

Yes. Edit: so long as you don't use Coca-Cola's design marks

For example, EOS is (1) a model of car (2) a sub-brand of camera (3) an operating system.

Neither Volkswagen nor Canon have shown any interest in smashing the Arista group's use of EOS.

The Gnome / Groupon example is much narrower in market scope but not so close as Phoenix ( BIOS ) versus Phoenix ( database ), which seem to co-exist OK.

No it is real, however there is another rule called trademark dilution. You can't use someone else's ubiquitous trademark, even if it is totally unrelated.

You could call your store Gnome Bikes, but you can't call it Google Bikes. Google is too famous and too unique.

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