David Fedor wrote:
>
> Out of basic courtesy (and a lack of desire to get involved with lawyers),
> if you're using someone else's name, be it company or product name,
> trademarked or not, then you need to respect the way they want it used.
> How would you feel if someone was using _your_ product name to do a
> knock-off? The only legal way to stop that is to enforce your trademark
> usage.
I understand this part. And I wouldn't want someone to take a
piece of software I've written and call it by the wrong name. But
I think there is a difference when it comes to documentation (Alan's
original post), where readibility is much more desirable than an A+
in legalese.
In documentation, using words that people actually use in real
life leads to much less tech support because people understand what
it is you're trying to describe. Then they actually read the docs
instead of letting their eyes glaze over and looking for the (800)
number or email address. I can't remember the source, but there was
a study some time back that concluded that every $1,000 spent in
improving documentation resulted in $10,000 saved in customer support.
e.g., saying "HotSync the records from your PalmIII to your
desktop computer" IMHO is much more appealing than "using HotSync(R)
technology to transfer records from your Palm(TM) connected organ-
iser." But I agree that there's some middle ground. Maybe something
like "Perform a HotSync to backup the records from your Palm handheld"
would be okay? Then a blurb at the end of the documentation stating
that "HotSync(R) technology, Palm Computing(TM), etc. is a registered
trademark of Palm Computing, a 3Com company." (?)
> And yes, we understand that some of the things in there are a mouthfull.
> :-( Sometimes you've got to grin and bear it, while working to improve
> things in the future.
It wasn't my intention to seem heavy-handed with the "grammatical
tomfoolery" statement. I do understand that Palm is in a difficult
situation of trying to promote "Palm" awareness yet keep the trade-
mark on a word that is so descriptive of their product. I've started
to notice a lot of CE device and software using the word "Palm" and
hope that the Palm Computing/3Com legal dept. pursues trademark issues
with them as effectively (or more so) as they do with developers in
their own camp.
Sincerely,
Daniel.
