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From: merlin@neuro.usc.edu (merlin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: AT&T vs BSDI -- on the proper naming of operating systems -- UNIX
Message-ID: <l6npbhINNk36@neuro.usc.edu>
Date: 21 Jul 92 10:22:41 GMT
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This will be an interesting case to follow. Unfortunately, BSDI seems to
have surrendered too rapidly on AT&T's claimed trademark on the term UNIX.
Instead of answering calls at (800)ITS-UNIX they now answer (800)800-4BSD.
AT&T makes their trademark claim in their subsidiary publications:
"UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the U.S.A. and other countries."
(Open Dektop Administrator's Guide, Santa Cruz Operation, 23-JAN-91)
However, claiming a trademark in press and demonstrating that AT&T has
pursued the necessary legal means of defending that claim (AT&T must
vigorously protest and if necessary litigate against all infringements
brought to their attention) are two very different things. In my opinion,
AT&T has failed for many years to litigate against it's largest infringer
(UC Regents BSD UNIX), and as a consequence has lost their trademark.
In a similar case, the defendants argued the term xerox had fallen into
general use to describe copies, copiers, and the process of plain paper
copying. Xerox won their trademark prosecution. However, unlike the
xerox case (where a distinct line of copiers with the name Xerox exist)
AT&T has allowed a third party (UC Regents) to distribute many versions
of BSD UNIX including smaller and smaller portions of (and in some cases
completely excluding) any original AT&T source code.
Indeed, UC Regents have been openly releasing copies of their sources
excluding any AT&T derived material under the name 'BSD UNIX' and/or
'Berkeley UNIX' for many years. The 'UNIX system family tree' shown
in textbooks includes a line of AT&T/ATTIS/USG/USDL/USL UNIX, a line
of Bell Research UNIX, and two lines of Berkeley UNIX (1BSD & 2BSD on
PDP-11's; 3BSD & 4BSD on VAXen). Textbooks also refer to BSD UNIX as
non-Bell Laboratories and non-AT&T UNIX. Indeed, if there is ever any
reason for confusion about which version of UNIX one may receive from
a vendor it is confusion over the constant renaming of the AT&T UNIX
-- it is variously called AT&T UNIX, ATTIS UNIX, USG UNIX, USDL UNIX,
and USL UNIX -- I have personally never seen the commercial AT&T UNIX
product simply called UNIX. AT&T seems to prefer substantially longer
descriptive names including 'AT&T SYSV UNIX Release III Version 2.2'.
The fact of the matter is that whether or not AT&T claims trademark
in the term UNIX, the word (and it's lower case synonym 'unix') have
fallen into common use as a way to describe an increasingly standard
set of user utilities, system calls, process management, filesystems,
virtual memory management, software development, and networking tools.
As far as I am aware AT&T has never litigated against anyone in any
attempt to defend the supposed trademark status of UNIX. Indeed, it
would seem that without prepending the terms AT&T, Bell Research, or
BSD no one would have a clue which of the three UNIX systems someone
using the term UNIX would intend. Moreover, because there are many
obvious significant differences between these systems (although they
support many common interfaces) no one would be likely to be confused
into believing a BSD UNIX system was actually an AT&T USL UNIX system.
The BSDI literature uses the term UNIX as follows:
'BSD/386 is a "Berkeley UNIX" compatible operating system for
the 386 and 486 PC architectures. It is based on the most
recent release from the Computer Systems Research Group of
the University of California, Berkeley -- the Networking
Release 2. The NET2 tape contained no AT&T licensed code,
but was not a complete system. BSDI has completed the system
and added additional drivers. The resulting system does not
require a license from AT&T, and so is available in source
form at a fraction of AT&T's price.'
It seems to me that BSDI has been extremely carefull about spelling out
exactly where they obtained their starting material and what they have
done to that material. There is not the slightest hint in any of BSDI's
advertising that they are selling any variety of AT&T or Bell Research
UNIX -- they are clearly and specifically selling 'Berkeley UNIX' as it
has been distributed by the UC Regents for many years. The only real
difference between BSDI UNIX and the UC Regents 'Berkeley UNIX' is that
the BSDI BSD/386 UNIX if a fully functional operating system which runs
on a commonly available consumer grade platform.
In my opinion, having worked in the computer industry since 1976 with
many years of experience as manager of computer centers in academia,
government, domestic and international corporations, and as a faculty
member in the management of information sciences program at a local
university, I would be willing to testify that, in my professional
opinion, AT&T has lost it's claimed trademark on the term UNIX, BSDI
has not misrepresented it's product, and no reasonable person would
be confused into believing BSD UNIX is at all derived from AT&T UNIX.
I suspect a great many other people would testify similarly.
AT&T's litigation against BSDI may just be an attempt by a huge company
to financially ruin a tiny potential competitor by forcing BSDI to incur
massive legal costs to defend against AT&T's lawyers. Perhaps BSDI will
interplead UC Regents as their original source of material so that the
UC Regents General Counsel's Office (which may be able to compete with
the staffing levels at AT&T) might make an appropriate response to AT&T
-- this would at least reduce BSDI's legal costs in this matter.
All in all, AT&T's actions seem monopolistic and anticompetitive -- it
may be that some federal regulators may want to investigate these AT&T
actions for evidence of attempted restraint of trade.
AJ
p.s. Doesn't it seem strange to anyone that AT&T didn't ask for a TRO
prohibiting BSDI from continuing to rerelease source code to customers?
Perhaps this case is one of the things holding up the 4.4BSD release.
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