Re: How to mention tradenames?

Subject: Re: How to mention tradenames?
From: Julie Barker <julie -at- HARSTON -dot- CV -dot- COM>
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 1994 11:03:03 BST

Hallo Herman

I work for a subsidiary of a large US CAD/CAM software company.
We put into the Trademarks and Copyrights section of our books
whatever we're told to by the Legal Department. Currently the
Trademarks page contains this (in addition to trademarks for all
our own products):

1. A fairly long list of specific trademark information for any company
that's big enough to sue us for copyright infringement (or whatever
the legal jargon would be) if they felt so inclined, e.g.

- AXP, DEC, DECnet, DECstation, DECwindows, Digital LN03/LN03 Plus/LN03R,
MicroVAX, MicroVAX II, Open VMS, ULTRIX, VAX, VAXstation, VAXcluster,
VMS, VT100, VT220, and VT340 are trademarks of
Digital Equipment Corporation.

- Apple and LaserWriter are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.

- Sun, OpenWindows, Solaris, SPARCserver, SPARCstation, and SunOS are
trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

- etc... for IBM, Interleaf, Canon, HP ...

2. A "catchall" for anything else:

"All other product names are trademarks of their respective owners."


Be careful! I have found that it's easy to get carried away trying to
get the trademark and copyright stuff really accurate e.g. Is this one
a registered trademark or just a trademark? (BTW - when all else fails
on this, I say "X, Y, and Z are trademarks or registered trademarks of
ABC Corporation.)

I have no idea if any company ever has actually ever sued another for
failing to include the appropriate trademark declaration in their
documentation, but I doubt it ;o)

I feel a bit like a reformed addict (oops, not *that* topic again) - I
used to REALLY care about my trademark list, and spend FAR too much
time trying to get it right (but only in my own time, after work, and
it didn't affect my performance back in the office...). However, I have
noticed recently looking around at other software documentation that
the same product is often trademarked differently in different
documents from the same company, let alone documentation from other
companies ('SPARC' is a good example of this).

So now I just say chill out, say "All other product names are
trademarks of their respective owners" and spend all that spare time
doing something more useful.

cheers

----------------------------------------------------------------
Julie Barker * Project Tech Writer * julie -at- harston -dot- cv -dot- com
Computervision Ltd, Harston Mill, Harston, Cambridge CB2 5NH, UK

>> Eat healthy, stay fit, die anyway <<


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