On April 16, 2003 09:19 am, Jim Starkey wrote:

> At 07:39 AM 4/16/03 -0400, Paul Schmidt wrote:
> >Come now, the only ones that gain when Open Source projects start suing
> > each other is The Evil Empire(tm) and it's Emperor. The Firebird Project
> > screwed up when we (the royal we here) didn't have the foresite to
> > register the trademark Firebird. The real way to fix this now is to
> > immediately register the trademark name The Firebird Database, then adopt
> > that usage everywhere that we use Firebird now. Heck we use FB more then
> > we use Firebird.
>
> A trademark does not require registration to be valid. Registration is
> little more than
> official recognition of the date of first use of a mark and establish the
> jurisdiction
> of the Federal courts. If you look, you will find that many of the most
> famous marks (if I remember correctly, Kleenex and Unix) are not
> registered. Use of a mark establishes its validity.

I think those are both registered these days, if memory serves Caldera (or
SCO something or another, I forget their new name) owns the rights to Unix.
If the symbol ® appears with a name then it's registered a circle containing
TM has the same meaning, I just don't have a fancy character for it :-) I
will agree though that Firebird database probably has squatters rights to the
name, since it has been in use for a couple of years now.

> Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't AOL the power behind Mozilla.org? And
> if AOL is the personification of non-Microsoft corporate evil, what is?
> I've never
> forgiven them for cutting off my supply of free floppy disks...

The question is, how much power does AOL have over what Mozilla.org actually
does. However that's not at issue here, the issue is, was the choice of
Firebird as a new name done by accident, or was it done intentionally,
because Mozilla.org realized that the name wasn't registered, and they could
gained some popularity, by hijacking another open source programs name?

If it was by accident, and then they could gain considerably by offering
Firebird the database the registration, in good faith. If it's deliberate
then it could cost them dearly within the O/S community. If they recant then
find, otherwise, simply send Netscape an email, stating the date that you
removed all Netscape products from your computer, and that you have done so,
on principal.