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Re: EMACS trademarked?!?
- To: KLOTZ@MIT-MC.ARPA
- Subject: Re: EMACS trademarked?!?
- From: Mark Crispin <MRC@SU-SCORE.ARPA>
- Date: Wed 10 Oct 84 19:52:44-PDT
- Cc: WANCHO@SIMTEL20.ARPA, BUG-EMACS@MIT-MC.ARPA, TOPS-20@SU-SCORE.ARPA
- In-reply-to: Message from "Leigh L. Klotz <KLOTZ @ MIT-MC>" of Wed 10 Oct 84 13:33:00-PDT
- Phone: (415) 497-1407 (Stanford); (415) 968-1052 (residence)
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I think it is quite unlikely that that trademark would stand up in court.
The original meaning of "EMACS" became lost once the EMACS interface was
implemented in other than TECO on a PDP-10, and has since come to mean a
generic class of display editors with certain characteristics. This is
precisely the sort of thing which keeps a name from being a trademark --
in the USA "Asprin" lost its trademark status and great lengths are gone
to protect "Kleenex" and "Xerox" from becoming generic names for tissues
and copying machines respectively.
Because of this, even RMS couldn't trademark the name EMACS (assuming he
wanted to) any more.
The question is, who is going to sue Unipress? I suspect it'll be one
of the other companies which have proprietary versions of EMACS. A pity,
because Unipress ought to be hit for a nice amount in $$ for damages
(restraint in trade, etc.) and it'd be nice if the people who worked on
PDP-10 EMACS got it...
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