-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Sho Kuwamoto wrote: > Hi all. > > I'm not a lawyer, but here's my understanding. > > We definitely want to court third party developers, and we know that having > lots of Flash projects out there makes our ecosystem stronger. So please > don't take this as an affront. > > That having been said, my understanding of trademark law is that you have to > defend your trademark consistently if you want to protect it later. This is > different from patents and other forms of intellectual property, where you > can pick and choose when you defend it. > > Let's say that two years from now, Microsoft decides to create something > called the Flash Player. If they can point to lots and lots of cases where we > have let people use the word "Flash", then we lose the protection of our > trademark.
So, as Macromedia hasn't (for several years now) enforced their trademark as such, we're now in a position were there are many projects, tools, websites, etc, using the name Flash. Perhaps they've let the cat out of the bag, and should be viewed as having lost the trademark from non-enforcement? (By someone with more money and lawyers than me!) ;-> + Justin -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFESNstFAuZn5lS2IMRAmQuAKCxTipD0jUPKHQ1HOuwTcvjzQYb0gCfTVKQ IJ7d7uRYh3VZ2JtnzRoPI4M= =B+cB -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ osflash mailing list [email protected] http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org
