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From: mark@roissy.umd.edu (Mark Sienkiewicz)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: What is unix?
Date: 25 Jun 1993 21:16:24 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland
Lines: 39
Message-ID: <20fpv8$kgv@umd5.umd.edu>
References: <1993Jun25.011623.21529@spectrum.xerox.com> <1993Jun25.152721.14684@bert.eecs.uic.edu> <C96r88.3o9@rahul.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: roissy.umd.edu
In article <C96r88.3o9@rahul.net> dhesi@rahul.net (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>In <1993Jun25.152721.14684@bert.eecs.uic.edu> zmola@bert.eecs.uic.edu
>(Carl Zmola) writes:
>
>> Unix(tm) is owned by (USL? Novell). If you don't pay for the
>>name, It's not UNIX. Nice, simple and legal (is that an oxmoron :-) ).
>
>you claiming that the word UNIX is not used in a generic sense, but
>only as a trade mark? If not, then exactly what claim are you making?
The claim is merely that "UNIX" is a trademark.
AT&T once created a product that they sold under the trademark "UNIX". They
later transfered the product and the name to a subsidiary named "Unix
Systems Laboratories". They are still using the word Unix as a trademark, so
it still _is_ a trademark.
If you started selling a Unix-like system and advertised then phone number
1-800-ITS-UNIX, you would be sued by USL and the court would order you to
stop because you are infringing on USL's trademark. (This is what happened
to BSDI.)
Trademarks can pass into the public domain if they fall into common use
("asprin" and "zipper", for example), but only if the company that owns
the trademark does not defend it. The fact that USL sued BSDI over the
trademark (among other things), is USL defending it's trademark.
So if you say "BSDi is Unix", it is like saying "I will make a copy on
the Xerox machine". People know what you mean, even though the machine
in question is an IBM photocopier. The name "Xerox" still belongs to
a company named Xerox. (They even run ads in magazines to remind
people that Xerox is a trademark, not a generic term.)
Like the word "Coke", the word "Unix" is often used to describe any
of a class of products, even though it is legally the name of only one
of them. As long as the company that owns the trademark is actively
using it and defending it as a trademark, there is no
[ there are gobs more details about trademarks, but this should do]