I collect interesting tidbits of Copyright and (Software) Patents news, and rarely do I venture into the other realms of so-called “Intellectual Property” (Geistiges Eigentum here in Switzerland): TradeMarks.
On the O'Reilly Radar O’Reilly responds to the recent flak they’ve been receiving over the Cease and Desist letter regarding the use of the term “Web 2.0” in a conference name. ¹
Personally, I guess I do approve of some sort of trademark regime, as long as this is not used to quench certain forms of speech, or make it harder for you to exercise your rights granted to you by a license (2005-06-24 Software). On the other hand, I really despise people who are brand-conscious when it comes to clothes and all that. The merits of the product should be key, not the brand used. Sometimes the brand can be used as a shortcut to stand for the merits of the product, but this line of thinking leads to undersired effects such as people investing more money into building their brand instead of improving their product and all that. Perhaps trademarks should be relaxed a bit.
Independently of all this, I think the emotional backlash from the bloggosphere in the O’Reilly situation is ridiculous.
#Trademarks