On Sat, 18 Mar 2023, Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk wrote:
Just like Anacin and Anadin - when things move across international
boundaries,local copyrights are a mess!
In USA, copyright and trademark are handled by two different departments.
Copyright registration is handled by Library of Congress. Although
registration is not required, in the event of an infringement suit, it
makes the copyright largely uncontestable, rendering THAT part of the suit
moot.
Trademark is handled by the Patent And Trademark Office. Registration is
advisable. But even an unregistered trademark, if well documented, can be
used to show "prior use", to defend in a suit, or to contest a new
registration.
Many trademarks have entered common usage, such as "kleenex" for facial
tissue, or "Xerox", and are rather diluted, although still not available
for competitors to use.
In 1987, while doing some business at PTO (Patent and Trademark), I
confirmed that "MS-DOS" was trademarked, whereas "PC-DOS was NOT
trademarked. IBM considered it to be a description of the product, not
the NAME. Similarly, you would not be able to trademark "DOS" due to
extensive prior use.
I don't know the details of what happened when Concurrent CP/M-86 was
briefly marketed as "Concurrent PC-DOS".
OB_Disclaimer: IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer), although I did costume as one on
Halloween one year.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
