Hi Hanno, On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 05:47:12PM +0100, Hanno Böck wrote: > I hope this is the right place for such a question.
sure, this is open discussion. Note that if you wanted to ask in German, fsfe-de@ would be another place for questions like this. http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-de > The problem: It's nearly impossible to find a name that isn't used somewhere > else. Actually that is not so hard, one of my favorites links is http://www.dwheeler.com/totro.html Then you can always use an animal or a word in a different language to construct something new and cannot be used easily as a trademark. > And even if the name is absolutely new, you can't be sure if someone > thinks that it sounds similar to something else. It generally is okay to have a sound like something else. The question is: Would a reasonable person find you infringing a trademark? Not all words can be a trademark alone, general words like "book", usually cannot. > Now, how can someone be sure to choose a name for a project and that I won't > be sued for it? Suing can occur anytime even without a cause, there is not absolute certainty. You can only get a reasonable ground. First try a search engine to see if the term is already used. Secondly think about commercial projects (Free Software or not) that use similiar names; you want to have a distance for this. Third: (optional) get a written statment by a laywer to raise chances. Lawyers, like you, can lookup trademark databases. And they can give some sort of guarantee when they do it for money and in writing. > As there were a lot of strange lawsuits because of project names (e.g. the > mobilix-case), it seems nearly impossible to be safe with it. > > > Any suggestions about that? Act in good faith, use at least setp 1 and 2 described above. Bernhard
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