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JavaScript is a trademark owned by Oracle

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Re: JavaScript is a trademark owned by Oracle

#71

Post by kazinator »

greenyoda wrote: post #2

Wikipedia says: "Today, 'JavaScript' is a trademark of Oracle Corporation. It is used under license for technology invented and implemented by Netscape Communications and current entities such as the Mozilla Foundation." [1] It's one of a long list of Java-related trademarks originally registered by Sun: https://web.archive.org/web/20100528154600/http://www.sun.co... Maybe Sun originally intended it to be the name of…

So the Wikipedia says that the trademarked term "JavasScript", a word, is used under license for technology. That seems odd.

Re: JavaScript is a trademark owned by Oracle

#72

Post by chc »

jameshart wrote: post #67
laumars wrote: post #50

This shouldn't be news to anyone who's old enough to remember the internet in the 90's. Back then Microsoft named their EMCAScript implementation "JScript" to avoid problems with Sun's trademark (I'm sure everyone on here is already aware that Oracle bought Sun a few years back). However I don't think this trademark is worth anything to Oracle any longer. Trademarks need to be defended or they're lost. This is why Wo…

Let's be careful with terminology here. I'm (also) not an IP lawyer, but as I understand it your use of the term 'public domain' here is inappropriate. If you're arguing that JavaScript has become genericized - on the basis, presumably, that there are multiple institutions making available various implementations of JavaScript without acknowledging or licensing Oracle's trademark - I'm not sure that's correct, and ty…

What's inappropriate about saying a term that is in wide, generic usage is in the public domain?

Re: JavaScript is a trademark owned by Oracle

#74

Post by bsimpson »

pluma wrote: post #58
sambeau wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's explains how LiveScript became Javascript but it doesn't answer the more interesting question: how did Netscape end up using a Sun trademark?

As I understand it from Crockford's retelling and what I've read on the web and heard in podcasts, Sun was concerned that LiveScript could be seen as a competitor to Java if both were present in the browser. Netscape wanted Java but wasn't willing to kill off their scripting language, so they agreed to name it JavaScript to make it sound like the two are related (and JS being "merely" a scripting language, people wou…

The eventual compromise was that JavaScript would be a playground for experimentation and learning; whereas, Java was designed for hardcore computer science-types. If you wanted to add rich functionality to your site, you'd use JavaScript to call into a Java library, which did the heavy lifting. (This was paraphrased from Brendan Eich's The Origin of JavaScript: http://javascriptjabber.com/124-jsj-the-origin-of-javascript...)

Of course, the web community embraced Shockwave/Flash over Java, and Java retreated to the server and mobile. Later, Steve Jobs was famously unimpressed with Macromedia/Adobe's forays into mobile and refused to ship a Flash interpretter in iOS. This led to the decline of Flash and a rising interest in creating a rich stack for client-side applications in JavaScript, bringing us to today's stack (canvas, WebGL, web audio, WebRTC, Ember/Angular/React, web components, pnacl/asm, etc.).

Re: JavaScript is a trademark owned by Oracle

#75

Post by chc »

chrisdevereux wrote: post #15
cpach wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gah. It’s such a weird naming choice. I still have peers confusing Java and Javascript...

I heard that if you try to run Java in a Javascript VM, it is silently coerced into almost the right JS code.

Most Java programs won't even parse.

Re: JavaScript is a trademark owned by Oracle

#76

Post by derefr »

chc wrote: post #72
jameshart wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be careful with terminology here. I'm (also) not an IP lawyer, but as I understand it your use of the term 'public domain' here is inappropriate. If you're arguing that JavaScript has become genericized - on the basis, presumably, that there are multiple institutions making available various implementations of JavaScript without acknowledging or licensing Oracle's trademark - I'm not sure that's correct, and ty…

What's inappropriate about saying a term that is in wide, generic usage is in the public domain?

I would say that it's not in wide, generic usage, but rather in wide, implicitly-specific usage.

That is, "generic usage" refers to things like people using "a kleenex" to refer to any facial tissue or "a xerox" to refer to any mimeograph. However, when people say "JavaScript", they always mean the exact same JavaScript: the one Oracle owns.

(It could be argued that they mean ECMAscript—but that's a bit like saying that people who say "pass me a coke" when what they have available are cans of no-name generic cola (with trade-dress explicitly reminiscent of Coca-Cola's, no less) are actually thinking they want any generic cola, rather than that they want a Coca-Cola and that the can you have to offer is merely an adequate stand-in.

Re: JavaScript is a trademark owned by Oracle

#77

Post by Alupis »

chc wrote: post #72
jameshart wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be careful with terminology here. I'm (also) not an IP lawyer, but as I understand it your use of the term 'public domain' here is inappropriate. If you're arguing that JavaScript has become genericized - on the basis, presumably, that there are multiple institutions making available various implementations of JavaScript without acknowledging or licensing Oracle's trademark - I'm not sure that's correct, and ty…

What's inappropriate about saying a term that is in wide, generic usage is in the public domain?

"Public Domain" has a very specific legal meaning -- of which does not apply to this situation.

Re: JavaScript is a trademark owned by Oracle

#78

Post by bjt »

chc wrote: post #72
jameshart wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be careful with terminology here. I'm (also) not an IP lawyer, but as I understand it your use of the term 'public domain' here is inappropriate. If you're arguing that JavaScript has become genericized - on the basis, presumably, that there are multiple institutions making available various implementations of JavaScript without acknowledging or licensing Oracle's trademark - I'm not sure that's correct, and ty…

What's inappropriate about saying a term that is in wide, generic usage is in the public domain?

It's technically correct but not idiomatic.

Technically correct because by the definition that Wikipedia gives (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain), non-enforcement of a trademark could lead to forfeit of the rights on that trademark, and that is one of the options mentioned in the definition.

But not idiomatic because the term is much more commonly used in copyright, rather than trademark, where it has a very specific legal meaning. A copyrighted work enters the public domain when the copyright expires (or in old cases, if the owner failed to renew the copyright).

Re: JavaScript is a trademark owned by Oracle

#79

Post by ChuckMcM »

Amongst many other trademarks. The one that irritates me is that we really really wanted to call the browser "Webrunner" and at the last moment of trademark clearance we heard that Taligent (the Apple/IBM thing) had already gotten it. I still have the jacket where we had the stitching done [1]. So we ended up calling it HotJava. Sigh.

[1] https://plus.google.com/u/0/+ChuckMcManis/posts/hdvbvWCvbuY

Re: JavaScript is a trademark owned by Oracle

#80

Post by throwaway0010 »

derefr wrote: post #76
chc wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's inappropriate about saying a term that is in wide, generic usage is in the public domain?

I would say that it's not in wide, generic usage, but rather in wide, implicitly-specific usage. That is, "generic usage" refers to things like people using "a kleenex" to refer to any facial tissue or "a xerox" to refer to any mimeograph. However, when people say "JavaScript", they always mean the exact same JavaScript: the one Oracle owns. (It could be argued that they mean ECMAscript—but that's a bit like saying t…

The coke bit has regional variance. In the entire southern US "coke" is a fully generic term for all carbonated beverages: http://laughingsquid.com/soda-pop-or-coke-maps-of-regional-d...

Wikipedia lists "Coke" among marks that, while still protected, are often used generically: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized...

I think many marks on that list, including coke, could very well lose their status if someone were to bother to fight the legal battle.

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