This is not legal advice. Take this as it is. Just off my head and what I
know. I did not research this, but could, if Solr wants me to.
>From a marketing stand-point, probably.
>From a legal standpoint. They can do whatever they want with the name Solr
so long as they maintain a distance between any trademarked name and the
fundamental use of the trademark, unless there is substantial connection
between the trademark name and recognition. Of course, that is to be
determined by a few factors, length in business, trademarks carried, whether
or not the offending trademark makes a claim (not making a claim limits your
recovery substantially and may even null it.). They are also in South
Africa. So, throw in international law.
Of course, you also have fair use law. Well, this can get tricky. Here is an
example: myspace.com and moremyspace.com. If moremysapce.com is used as a
social networking site than myspace has a claim. If it is used as a social
networking site in parody then mysapce has no legal claim whatsoever.
Another example is booble.com (not work safe link!) That case lasted many
years and google lost.
Trademarks are a very tricky business and one that I will never practice.
Anyway, seeing as how they are making a search engine, they are using a
lower level FQDN and they have not made a dent in the industry it would be
futile to do anything but send them an email laying cliam to the name Solr.
*If you do not send them a letter/email laying claim to Solr you will lose
your rights to fight that battle with IANA, etc or the ability to seek legal
remedy.*
Eric
Law Student - Second Year
-Original Message-
From: scott chu [mailto:scott@udngroup.com]
Sent: Monday, October 25, 2010 9:55 AM
To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
Subject: Does anyone notice this site?
I happen to bump into this site: http://www.solr.biz/
They said they are also developing a search engine? Is this any connection
to open source "Solr"?
