On  Wed,  8  Jul  1992  12:44:00   CST  "Jim  Milles,  SLU  Law  Library"
<[log in to unmask]> said:
 
>I'm not  familiar enough with trademark  law to say whether  Eric Thomas
>has a cause of action against the authors of other "listservs";
 
I have  no idea  about the theory,  but in practice  it is  not feasible,
there  are just  too many  countries  involved and  "LISTSERV" was  never
formally registered.
 
>as I  understand it, there  was an  earlier BITNIC LISTSERV  before Eric
>wrote his program,  so he may not  be able to claim  trademark rights it
>the name.
 
Yes, that is why I called mine "Revised LISTSERV" at first. Users dropped
the  "Revised"  eventually,  once  the BITNIC  LISTSERV  had  disappeared
completely. The  generally available version  of the BITNIC  LISTSERV did
not support commands at all, so compatibility was not an issue.
 
>However, as a consumer,  I feel that I was injured  by passing off "Unix
>listserv" as  the network-standard  LISTSERV that  the vast  majority of
>users  are familiar  with.  At  the very  least,  the  authors of  "Unix
>listserv" should, for  the protection of its users, make  clear what the
>differences are.
 
What really surprised me is the way some of the developers of these "unix
listserv"  reacted  when I  kindly  asked  them  to call  their  software
something else and explained why.  I got typical usenet-ish answers about
Freedom and the like. This is surprising given the strong traditions that
exist in the academic world when it  comes to the work of other people or
institutions, copyright  or no copyright.  I can't  think of one  place I
worked for where management would  even consider allowing the development
of,  say, some  group communication  software called  World Wide  Web but
totally incompatible  with the WWW that  was developed at CERN,  at least
not without first getting permission from the people who wrote it.
 
  Eric