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Oracle Will Not Voluntarily Withdraw JavaScript Trademark

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Re: Oracle Will Not Voluntarily Withdraw JavaScript Trademark

#71

Post by LelouBil »

gklitz wrote: post #59
gary_0 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever anyone says "JavaScript" they actually mean "ECMAScript", which is the language browsers and scripting engines actually implement. The Web standard documents cannot use the term "JavaScript" because of the trademark issue. There isn't even such a thing as "Oracle JavaScript", they are sitting on the trademark without using it.

> Whenever anyone says "JavaScript" they actually mean "ECMAScript", which is the language browsers and scripting engines actually implement. It’s the exact opposite though. Whenever someone says ECMAScript they actually mean “I want to say JavaScript but for legal reasons I’m using another name for it” but that also happens so rarely that it’s not worth considering. If I invent a new term for iPads and say “well act…

> I invent a new term for iPads and say “well actually when people say iPad they mean ECMApad which is technically the same just a different branding of it” that doesn’t give me grounds to have Apples trademark on iPad discarded.

The point of a trademark is to protect Your brand.

Oracle doesn't make any product called JavaScript nor do they use JavaScript as a trademark in anything.

Your example with Apple is wrong because Apple makes devices that they call iPads.

Re: Oracle Will Not Voluntarily Withdraw JavaScript Trademark

#72

Post by physicles »

worthless-trash wrote: post #32
aperrien wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While descriptive, I'd think a catchier name might be in order. As a plus, that can be used to draw people away from any Oracle branding.

Just call it Browserscript, and be done with it. Call it what it is.

ScriptyScript

Re: Oracle Will Not Voluntarily Withdraw JavaScript Trademark

#73

Post by marcus0x62 »

throw646577 wrote: post #35
marcus0x62 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. I'm not a lawyer, let alone an IP lawyer, but Netscape creating a programming language called "JavaScript" seems like the kind of thing that would be likely to cause confusion in the marketplace. Netscape explicitly chose the name to latch on to the popularity of Java at the time. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me for the Sun of 1997 to want to protect their interest in the Java name by licensing it to Netsca…

Netscape didn't just try to "latch onto" the popularity of Java. Netscape _and_ Sun, together, called it JavaScript. The point was that the renamed language had rudimentary bindings that you could use to connect functionality in an HTML page with the applets embedded in it (which were effectively silo'd in HotJava) https://web.archive.org/web/20070916144913/https://wp.netsca... It was fully a partner decision. Also,…

Of course Sun was a willing participant. I didn't claim otherwise. Netscape wouldn't have been able to use the name without Sun's support.

Re: Oracle Will Not Voluntarily Withdraw JavaScript Trademark

#75

Post by timw4mail »

thayne wrote: post #33
trademark_ wrote: post #5

They must have read this counterpoint: https://mastodon.social/@trademark_/113732902163918914

> Yet, few of the millions who program in it realize they have much better choices Oh, if only that were true. I wish there were better choices for web development. And no, transpiling another language to JavaScript doesn't count.

How many of those developers really use Javascript, and not a transpiling abomination?

Re: Oracle Will Not Voluntarily Withdraw JavaScript Trademark

#77

Post by exabrial »

In my opinion, poking the sleeping fat bear is a dumb move, and a waste of money that is better spent funding individual contributors to important projects.

The worst case is unbelievably bad: they start asserting it. I would leave the status quo as-is and go find other hobbies. Besides, the longer it goes on without a battle, the better the case is to revoke it. It's infinitely better to let the status quo ride.

Re: Oracle Will Not Voluntarily Withdraw JavaScript Trademark

#78

Post by evanmoran »

troymc wrote: post #39
fzzzy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brendan Eich always used to say that ecmascript sounds like a skin disease.

Not to be confused with EczemaScript or AcneScript.

It sounds like you’ve come down with the elusive humor monad. To prevent state mutation be sure to bind once a day with OCaml:

https://ocaml.org/docs/monads

Re: Oracle Will Not Voluntarily Withdraw JavaScript Trademark

#79

Post by happymellon »

12_throw_away wrote: post #47
thayne wrote: post #38

Is Oracle wasting people's time and money (including their own) just for the fun of it? I don't see any practical reason to fight this.

> Is Oracle wasting people's time and money (including their own) just for the fun of it? No, as "fun" is a human concept. Don't fall into that trap [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42630410

Is "billable time" a human concept? Thats what I see when people ask why a lawyer is wasting peoples time.

Re: Oracle Will Not Voluntarily Withdraw JavaScript Trademark

#80

Post by foolswisdom »

wodenokoto wrote: post #64
mananaysiempre wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Not a lawyer.) To have rights to a trademark, you have to use it in, well, trade. It’s not enough for a term to refer to a specific thing in normal usage, you must have a widely recognized claim on that thing. It should be in the customer’s interest that your thing not be confusable with thing-alikes that others may offer, specifically by having an exclusive right to be sold as the thing. And Oracle demonstrably doe…

Oracle has a pretty strong claim on Java, and JavaScript was named after Java explicitly to piggy-back on the that names recognition and success. It’s bit like saying McDonald’s shouldn’t have trademark claims on “McDonald’s carbonara” because they don’t deal in Italian cuisine (that much)

The relationship between those two things is more like the relationship between burgers and fries, two things that some people may think belong together, but having a claim on one surely has connection to having a claim on the other.
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