NetBSD Trademark Application Completed

Daniel de Kok writes "The NetBSD Foundation is proud to announce that it has registered the ``NetBSD®'' trademark. The foundation would like to thank Jay Michaelson (Wasabi Systems) for filing the application and providing answers to the US Patent Office, and Carl Oppedahl (Oppedahl & Larson) for giving advice and keeping the Foundation informed about the process. An official policy on the use of the NetBSD® trademark is currently being drafted and will be made public soon."

wait

[Hinkey]

"An official policy on the use of the NetBSD® trademark is currently being drafted and will be made public soon" how can you condem them before you even hear there policy on the use of the trademark?

Re:trivial?

[drinkypoo]

It's probably taken so long because they didn't want to spend a lot of money on lawyer fees. Cross the right palms with silver, and things happen amazingly quickly. Fail to do so, and they happen amazingly slowly.

Re:wait

[Kenja]

" how can you condem them before you even hear there policy on the use of the trademark?"

Its realy very easy, all it takes is a desire to hate somthing. Just like the Linux & Mac haters that have never used the platforms or the Windows haters that think its unchanged since the broken Windows 95 systems they last used.

Re:trivial?

[dpille]

around $1000, possibly less if you do some of the paperwork yourself

But the orignal post is quite right- in this case it must have cost a comparative fortune. Looking at the prosecution history, you can see two office actions and an appeal. I'm not sure "DIY" is even in the ballpark for non-lawyer IP professionals (let alone the average guy) in such circumstances.

There's some additional prosecution history here [uspto.gov] if you're curious. Gotta say, the approach to get around the objections based on registrations for BSD and FREEBSD (see the 11/26/02 doc) is pretty interesting, and certainly emphasizes that getting a NETBSD registration required a fair amount of work/resources.

Re:trivial?

[TheRealMindChild]

Saves on having to hunt down and kill the jerk that forks NetBSD and calls it NetBSD. This would have saved a lot of hell with MySQL.

Re:trivial?

[beebware]

True, don't you just hate it when companies register trademarks - first Microsoft, now NetBSD - next you'll know Linux will become "evil" [linuxmark.org]. Oh, wait...