For approval: ENCUL

[Mark Shewmaker]

On Fri, 2003-05-23 at 07:18, John Cowan wrote:
> maa at liacc.up.pt scripsit:
> 
> > BTW, I'd like to know from the list if the term "open source" is legally 
> > protected. I don't think so, but obviously I need to know for sure, and this 
> > community seems the best place to inquire that.
> 
> It is not, at least not in the United States.

I don't see how that can said to be the case with complete certainty. 
(Granted, I'm not a lawyer.)

OSI abandoned an application for a registered trademark, but you don't
have to register a trademark to own a trademark, it's just not as strong
a claim.  (I do wish they'd make another go of official registration
anyway--especially since they've now been applying the mark in commerce
for more than 5 years.)

In any event, as people generally look to OSI as owning the "Open
Source" term, I would think that if a company claims something is Open
Source where OSI says it's not, then that company would get lots of
horrible publicity and be widely viewed as being dishonest.

So even if a company were to decide to bet that it had the legal right
to do that, I wouldn't think it would ever be a good idea for it to go
ahead and do so, just for simple marketing reasons.

 -Mark Shewmaker
  mark at primefactor.com
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