Microsoft's Open Source Licenses

[Chris Travers]

On 11/2/07, Simon Phipps <webmink at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Nov 2, 2007, at 16:54, Chris Travers wrote:

>
> Yes, it's different. If "Open Source" were a quality of which
> fractional achievement were significant your analogy would be OK.
> Since in this case "Open Source" is a service mark indicating
> approval of a license as conformant with the OSD, it is not
> appropriate for it to be associated with anything that has not been
> so approved.

Two points:
1)  I am not sure at all that Open Source would not be ruled generic
(in the same way "Gel Cel" was).
2)  Even if it were protectable, factual, comarative statements are
still OK.  If I want to say "This Hundai is similar to a Mercedes,"
the latter company has no grounds to come after me on the basis of
that statement alone.

Same thing if I were to ay that Fedora 7 is similar to Windows Vista
(though obviously I would take a lot of flak for such a statement by
all parties).

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

>Typically, trade mark and service mark licensing schemes
> make this clear so that the value of the mark can't be eroded by
> "embrace and extend" schemes where partial similarity is used to
> mislead the casual observer into associating the mark with an
> ineligible subject.
>
> S.
>
>
>