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Linbot

Kevin Russell krussell4 at home.com
Sat Sep 2 12:49:48 EDT 2000 
Erik Max Francis wrote:
> 
> There are clearcut cases of abuse of the trademark system; this doesn't
> sound like one of them.  Trademarks must be enforced in order to have
> value; if a company holding a trademark doesn't fight off potential
> infringers, then the next time another infringer comes along they can
> use that as a defense.
> 
> In this case the software was LinkBot, and someone wrote a clone of it
> and called it LinBot.  Uh, it's a little hard to claim that's not a
> trademark problem.
> 
> Besides, the guy didn't get sued, didn't get told to give them his
> software (which would be ridiculous); they just asked him to change the
> name.  That seems quite reasonable, since the name is one letter away
> from theirs _and is a self-admitted clone of their product_.

I agree there was no real damage done in this case, and the company
didn't really have a choice but to try to enforce their trademark.
But there's still an element of picking-on-the-little-guy here.

It's really dicey to try to enforce "generic" trademarks, terms
that just describe in plain English what the product/service does,
like "liquor store", "word processor", "microwave oven", "chocolate
bar".  You could probably get them registered if you tried, but the
minute you tried to enforce them, the judge would laugh you out of
court (unless you lucked out and got your case heard on one of those
all-too-common days when reason and judges fail to connect).

"LinkBot" comes awfully close to a generic term.  Both "link" and
"bot" are established terms in the field.  LinkBot is nothing but
a bot that checks links.  The trademark owner might just have a leg 
to stand on in court, but it's a very weak and trembling leg.  If 
they'd taken on a company bigger than they are instead of a lone
open-source hacker, chances are they'd lose.

Anyway, I can't really fault the company for serving the 
cease-and-desist letter.  I can fault them for registering such a
stupid trademark, and I can fault them for trying to charge that
much money for a program that a single guy can clone in his spare
time.  But given that they'd already committed to those two
stupidities, they had no choice but play corporate goon.  We can
all have daydreams about Marduk calling their bluff and teaching 
them a lesson, but it's a hell of a lot easier and (given the 
frequency of illogical days in the court system) a lot safer for 
Marduk to just change the name.

-- Kevin
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