APL license - What about the enforced logos?

[John Cowan]

Rick Moen scripsit:

> More specifically, there was application to USPTO for Federal
> _registration_ of such a trademark (technically, service mark), which
> was declined because (I gather) the mark was deemed not distinctive
> enough, and was deemed "merely descriptive", which is bad, as opposed to
> "suggestive", which is good.[1]  (That is why commercial goods tend to
> get slightly misshapen names like "Glue Stic", plus distinctive trade
> dress, etc.)

Your bitlaw reference indeed mentions Windows (though not authoritatively)
as a descriptive mark, which can be registered only if it has acquired
a secondary meaning; other examples are Sharp, Digital, and International
Business Machines.  All of these plainly have implications beyond
the plain meaning of the words.

If OSI wanted to reapply, they might perhaps be able to show
that "Open Source" is sufficiently associated with OSI nowadays,
perhaps by ordering a customer survey.

> [1] More at:  http://www.bitlaw.com/trademark/degrees.html

-- 
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than the trees and all other acyclic            http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
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