In that case I'd expect no end of trouble about the room I built on BayMOO
once, named "7-Eleven" :) (Although it's probably been aged off the server
by now, and I don't think it had any doors, so it's unlikely to generate
web-pages on the fly when somebody wanders in, since they can't...)
> If you think "Absurd!" -- so did I, and so did other MOO wizards when
> they saw this. But the issue is not so simple, as I found out when I
> mailed EFF about the problem. If you like, I can post that response as well.
> Any ideas?
I assume this will eventually be settled just as it was in the physical
world: you're allowed to re-use company or product names, as long as
you're doing it in an obviously separate domain (e.g., it would be OK to
have both a Chrysler Performa and an Apple Performa, although Commodore,
had they not been hemmoraging at the time, should have been able to sue
Compaq over the latter's stealing of the product name "CDTV"). The
problem is that what constitutes "separate domains" still needs to be
hashed out in the area of web pages, and obviously your average MOO
operator doesn't want to be a test-case for that.
On the other hand, little companies also can't afford to sue over every
ASCII appearance of their name on the web. But as I understand copyright
law, they _are_ required to make threats over every apparent violation of
their copyright, or they are considered to not be actively trying to
defend the copyright and at some point they can lose it. For example, if
you publish a short story involving the word "kleenex" rather than the
phrase "Kleenex Brand Facial Tissue", you should get a cease-and-desist
letter from the kleenex people -- if they don't police this sort of
thing, they can end up with "kleenex" in the OED (wait: just checked, and
kleenex _is_ in the OED, although it's still capitalized), along with the
now-dead trademarks like "trampoline". If you look in Writer's Digest
and similar magazines, you'l notice companies taking out full-page ads
trying to protect trademarks like "realtor" (nearly doomed; the OED gives
both lower- and upper-case, with lower-case generic first).
-- Evan Kirchhoff, kirchh@umich.edu