Between Amazon.com, SCO, UCITA, the Microsoft antitrust case, and many other 'incidents' thus far, there are many other collective groups of people that understand trademark and copyright law better than us geeks. Our field is growing fast and promises to be lucrative as it matures and redefines large parts of society as we know it. Therefore, obviously, everyone and their f-ing brother is trying to get in on the ground floor by *whatever means necessary*.
Customer stupidity in things like being unable to distinguish between Microsoft and MikeRoweSoft is hardly grounds for the kind of legal warfare we're seeing today and would never hold up in most other sections of the business world. Many (probably most) of the people making these important legal decisions for the technology community have no idea how technology works and, therefore, aren't qualified to make these decisions. (Reference the whole 'one-click purchasing' concept that Amazon owns.) Mike Rowe and his little business may not be all that important on the large scale of things EXCEPT for the fact that it's setting a dangerous precedent for future cases. If Microsoft wins in the end, you can be damn sure they'll bring the whole precedent concept up next time they chase after someone. Stu -----Original Message----- From: John Nichel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 6:14 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PHP] Why we love Microsoft (0t) jon wrote: > I'm not sure if it's obvious to you geeks, but for those who don't know > trademark law, you need to defend your trademark or it falls into the > public domain. Hence, if Canon's copiers refer to how well they xerox, > then it's a problem. (Same way for Jello, Kleenex, etc...) > > Microsoft's lawyers probably could've handled it more tactfully, but > they were required to take action. > > -- jon Great, just what I need, someone to give this geek (me) a clue. -- By-Tor.com It's all about the Rush http://www.by-tor.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
