On Wednesday, 03/31/2010 at 11:24 EDT, Tom Huegel <tehue...@gmail.com> wrote: > Are any of the IBM OS,s trade marked?
VM/ESA, z/VM, z/OS, z/VSE, and OS/390 are all registered trademarks of IBM (at least in the US). As Carol posted, http://www.ibm.com/legal/us/en/copytrade.shtml (I include z/VSE in my list because it *is* registered in a "stylized" way that is, IMO, indistinguishable from typewritten.) It's easy to search the US Patent & Trademark Office database. Just go to http://www.uspto.gov and use the Search Marks function. It can be interesting to find out who *used* to own a trademark. Note the trademark (now dead) for z10, undoubtedly explaining why IBM trademarked "System z10". You can't register "VM" to protect its use as an abbreviation of "virtual machine". The fact that IBM may have invented the concept is irrelevant. You *can* register the *appearance* of "VM" in a particular trade or service mark, whether by itself (stylized) or in combination with something else (stylized or typewritten). In that case it doesn't matter what "VM" means; it's just a pair of glyphs. Searching for "VM" in the USPTO database nicely illustrates the point. Alan Altmark z/VM Development IBM Endicott
