OSI enforcement? (Was Re: Microsoft use of the term "Open Source")

['Rick Moen']

Quoting Philippe Verdy (verdy_p at wanadoo.fr):

> > > ...and really a lot of groups and companies throughout the world
> > > that are monitoring any attempt by anyone to register it for 
> > > its exclusive use.

> > And, I will reiterate yet again -- as I did when Philippe was attempting
> > this same chain of reasoning last year, that trademarks _never_ convey
> > any right to exclusive use.
> 
> I am attempting *what*?
> 
> You infer things that I never said. I have NEVER stated that trademarks
> "never convey any right to exclusive use". You are inventing !

Um, please read more carefully.  (You've inserted the word "NEVER".)  
I was saying that your postings from last year characterised trademarks
as making the owner "the legal owner of the expression" -- i.e., that
trademarks convey the right of exclusive use.

My point is that trademark is _not_ an exclusive right over a phrase --
i.e., that you suffer a fundamental conceptual problem in dealing
correctly with trademark at all -- a conceptual problem you show you
still labour under, above, in your reference to "exclusive use" of
phrases.

> But you, on the opposite side, are trying to convince everyone that what US
> tolerates or legalizes on its soil applies elsewhere without conditions.

I'd be glad to join you in beating that straw man:  It seems almost
unsporting to point out that I never said any such thing.

-- 
"If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the 
shoulders of giants." (Isaac Newton)    "If I have not seen as far as others, 
it is because giants were standing on my shoulders." (Hal Abelson)   
"In computer science, we stand on each other's feet." (Brian K. Reed)