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USPTO petitioned to cancel Oracle's JavaScript trademark

infoworld.com

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Re: USPTO petitioned to cancel Oracle's JavaScript trademark

#11

Post by tobr »

londons_explore wrote: post #4

> has not sold any JavaScript goods or rendered any JavaScript services since acquiring the trademark from Sun Microsystems in 2009. I find this hard to believe. Somewhere in the 159,000 employees of Oracle, someone has made and sold some product using the javascript brand. Just a single example of "Javascript" written on a spec sheet of some product would be enough to defend the trademark.

> Just a single example of "Javascript" written on a spec sheet of some product would be enough to defend the trademark.

Is that really true? Doesn’t it have to be used as a trademark? If they just mention the programming language in generic terms rather than as something specifically owned and sold by Oracle, would that really be enough? That’s exactly what you would expect from a generic term - that it would be used generically.

Re: USPTO petitioned to cancel Oracle's JavaScript trademark

#12

Post by blagie »

londons_explore wrote: post #4

> has not sold any JavaScript goods or rendered any JavaScript services since acquiring the trademark from Sun Microsystems in 2009. I find this hard to believe. Somewhere in the 159,000 employees of Oracle, someone has made and sold some product using the javascript brand. Just a single example of "Javascript" written on a spec sheet of some product would be enough to defend the trademark.

No, it wouldn't. Simple use of JavaScript somewhere isn't enough for this.

Oracle would need to show vigorous trademark enforcement. I use 'JavaScript' generically, with no reference to Oracle or a trademark, and have never heard from an Oracle lawyer. I had no idea who the current owner of the trademark was.

I bet 95% of people who use the term have no idea it has any connection to Oracle's legal department.

At this point, there are probably millions of .js files out there. If Oracle wished to enforce all of these moving to .es for ECMAScript, they would have needed to start that process a long, long time ago.

Oracle's own documentation uses this term generically:

https://docs.oracle.com/en/database/oracle/apex/22.1/aexjs/t...

To the contrary, a use like this doesn't support the trademark, but pretty much invalidates it entirely.

Re: USPTO petitioned to cancel Oracle's JavaScript trademark

#14

Post by IgorPartola »

From http://www.nerdware.org/doc/abriefhistory.html

> 1995 - Brendan Eich reads up on every mistake ever made in designing a programming language, invents a few more, and creates LiveScript. Later, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of Java the language is renamed JavaScript. Later still, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of skin diseases the language is renamed ECMAScript.

Re: USPTO petitioned to cancel Oracle's JavaScript trademark

#16

Post by jfengel »

That's probably the right thing to do, but "Javascipt" was always a terrible name for it. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Java. It was just an early bit of dotcom marketing. They had aspirations of getting the two to work together, but they gave up on that almost immediately.

For a while, Google would conflate Java and Javascript when searching. That was really aggravating.

"ECMAScript" isn't a great name, either, but it at least doesn't confuse people. Personally, I liked "Livescript" as a name.

Re: USPTO petitioned to cancel Oracle's JavaScript trademark

#17

Post by fragmede »

jfengel wrote: post #16

That's probably the right thing to do, but "Javascipt" was always a terrible name for it. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Java. It was just an early bit of dotcom marketing. They had aspirations of getting the two to work together, but they gave up on that almost immediately. For a while, Google would conflate Java and Javascript when searching. That was really aggravating. "ECMAScript" isn't a great name, eithe…

browserscript, since that's where it originated, even though it's outgrown that.

Re: USPTO petitioned to cancel Oracle's JavaScript trademark

#18

Post by yesguidance »

fragmede wrote: post #17
jfengel wrote: post #16

That's probably the right thing to do, but "Javascipt" was always a terrible name for it. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Java. It was just an early bit of dotcom marketing. They had aspirations of getting the two to work together, but they gave up on that almost immediately. For a while, Google would conflate Java and Javascript when searching. That was really aggravating. "ECMAScript" isn't a great name, eithe…

browserscript, since that's where it originated, even though it's outgrown that.

Lets just call it scriptscript and move on :)
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