At 03:43 AM 17/04/2003 +0000, An Anonymous Person wrote:

>IAAL, and recommend you seek professional advice.
>
>Unless the moz team produce a database product there is likely
>to be no conflict in most jurisdictions.
>
>Learn to live with it.

It seems our legal advice is better than theirs. Trademarks do not have to
registered. Some of the biggest and oldest trademarks in the world have
*never* been registered, e.g. "Kleenex".

We have been using the "Firebird" mark, widely and internationally, for an
open-source software product for almost three years. Legally, that is all
it takes. Mozilla's application to use it for their open source software
product will fail because of that.

Their argument that a browser is not in the same space as a database is
futile, given the open source context of the conflict. They will bump into
problems immediately they attempt to distribute software modules in
RPMs...The potential for namespace confusion abounds.

That is quite aside from the main dispute: Firebird is an independent
software project. It would be ludicrous to suppose that there would not be
a widespread misapprehension that Mozilla and Firebird were related.

Please be so courteous as to sign your postings in future.

Helen