Re: Never ever use word BitKeeper if Larry does not like you

Stephen C. Tweedie
2003-03-14T16:17:23Z

Hi,

On Fri, 2003-03-14 at 16:21, John Jasen wrote:

> > > Let's try a little simple substitution since you seem to be needing coffee
> > > this morning:
> > >
> > > "Red Cap: a proprietary Red Hat clone"
> > > "The goal of this system is to produce a system compatible with Red Hat"
>
> Check with your lawyers again, since Red Hat has posted in the past that
> 'similar' namings would be chased after. I think the example they used was
> 'Pink Fedora'.

Having a product name "confusingly similar" to another one _is_ grounds
for trademark action. See Lindows, Mobilix etc. (And yes, of course,
it's a very subjective thing in many cases.)

But simply comparing one product to another is not the same.

I'd expect using a name like "BitBucket" to be much more at risk of
being a trademark infringement than merely claiming that a project "aims
to be BitKeeper compatible" or "can read BitKeeper repositories."

Cheers,
Stephen