3 ms·

Don't you need permission to advertise your product with Coca Cola™? Or in this case, would Amazon not need Elastic's permission to say "we use Elastic" to adv

by sammax 6y ago

Don't you need permission to advertise your product with Coca Cola™? Or in this case, would Amazon not need Elastic's permission to say "we use Elastic" to advertise AWS?

M2Ys4U 6y ago
> Don't you need permission to advertise your product with Coca Cola™? Not if what you're selling is Coca Cola
- rossmohax 6y ago
  Genuine question: why Amazon EKS and not Amazon Kubernetes then? I noticed every single managed Kubernetes doesn't call it Kubernetes.
  - mbreese 6y ago
    Huh? EKS => Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service Kubernetes is a little different here... it seems a bit more nebulous from an installation/instance point of view. It's a bit like saying we use "Linux". Which Linux? Debian? Ubuntu? RHEL? SUSE?
  - ZiiS 6y ago
    Because that Trademark is owned by the Linux Foundation who are very well positioned and financed (AWS themselves are Platinum members) and published clear usage instructions.
  - ecnahc515 6y ago
    As someone else said, what constitutes "Kubernetes" isn't well defined, and so the CNCF put limits on using the terminology in product names.
mbreese 6y ago
Trademark law is very different than copyright law. You are allowed to use trademarks in certain circumstances. You can’t imply a relationship that doesn’t exist, but AWS saying - this is a hosted version of Elasticsearch would probably be okay (but IANAL). Where they’d get into trouble is if they said they offered a hosted Elasticsearch, but under the hood it was something else. But, even then they could probably say that their offering was Elasticsearch compatible. The real question is: was AWS misleading customers? I don’t make any claims one way or the other about this specific case. But I wanted to point out that you don’t always need permission to use another’s trademark. From [1]: > Nominative use permits the use of a trademark – even in commercial contexts – if it is the most accurate way to refer to a good or service without misleading consumers as to its source. [1] https://google.github.io/opencasebook/trademarks/#fair-use-defense-to-trademark-infringement-nominative-use https://google.github.io/opencasebook/trademarks/#fair-use-d...
- jopsen 6y ago
  > if it is the most accurate way to refer to a good or service without misleading consumers as to its source. But if you're buying a service from AWS the source is not Elastic. You might be able to say compatible with elastic search. But using the name in your own product name seems unlikely to hold. I think this is shortsighted on Amazon's part, because it probably wouldn't cost all that much to make a joint offering. I would be curious to know where those lawsuits went. Because it seems like something that should have been resolved, and for which you could get an injunction. The problem is clearly that people think they are getting a service supported by ES, when they are getting a look-a-like copy service. Which is what trademarks are intended to resolve. In hindsight, maybe it would have worked better for ES, had they called the open source product something else, like how centos isn't called RedHat.
  - mbreese 6y ago
    > clearly that people think they are getting a service supported by ES Something like this is also asserted in the OP. However, I'm not so sure that is the case. I don't think it's clear at all. Knowing that Elasticsearch is (was) open-source, I'd assume that I'm getting an AWS hosted installation of Elasticsearch... which is entirely accurate. If you can install the software on your own server, and AWS offers a managed version of it, I have no expectation that the original developers are involved at all. Ever since the original release, it looks like AWS has been much better at avoiding any mention of Elastic.co. The original announcement Tweet was definitely misleading. > In hindsight, maybe it would have worked better for ES, had they called the open source product something else, like how centos isn't called RedHat. I think this is the major problem, and you're right. Elasticsearch was the original trademark and is the accurate mark for the software. They only formed Elastic.co later, and this is where a lot of confusion originates. Elasticsearch != elastic.co It might be better for AWS to just include a disclaimer like "AWS Elasticsearch Service includes the open source Elasticsearch software, but is not supported by the original developers." Something like that...
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  > The real question is: was AWS misleading customers? Hell yes. I thought it was Amazon's trademark!

by sammax 6y ago

Don't you need permission to advertise your product with Coca Cola™? Or in this case, would Amazon not need Elastic's permission to say "we use Elastic" to advertise AWS?

M2Ys4U 6y ago

> Don't you need permission to advertise your product with Coca Cola™? Not if what you're selling is Coca Cola

rossmohax 6y ago
Genuine question: why Amazon EKS and not Amazon Kubernetes then? I noticed every single managed Kubernetes doesn't call it Kubernetes.
- mbreese 6y ago
  Huh? EKS => Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service Kubernetes is a little different here... it seems a bit more nebulous from an installation/instance point of view. It's a bit like saying we use "Linux". Which Linux? Debian? Ubuntu? RHEL? SUSE?
- ZiiS 6y ago
  Because that Trademark is owned by the Linux Foundation who are very well positioned and financed (AWS themselves are Platinum members) and published clear usage instructions.
- ecnahc515 6y ago
  As someone else said, what constitutes "Kubernetes" isn't well defined, and so the CNCF put limits on using the terminology in product names.

mbreese 6y ago

Trademark law is very different than copyright law. You are allowed to use trademarks in certain circumstances. You can’t imply a relationship that doesn’t exist, but AWS saying - this is a hosted version of Elasticsearch would probably be okay (but IANAL). Where they’d get into trouble is if they said they offered a hosted Elasticsearch, but under the hood it was something else. But, even then they could probably say that their offering was Elasticsearch compatible. The real question is: was AWS misleading customers? I don’t make any claims one way or the other about this specific case. But I wanted to point out that you don’t always need permission to use another’s trademark. From [1]: > Nominative use permits the use of a trademark – even in commercial contexts – if it is the most accurate way to refer to a good or service without misleading consumers as to its source. [1] https://google.github.io/opencasebook/trademarks/#fair-use-defense-to-trademark-infringement-nominative-use https://google.github.io/opencasebook/trademarks/#fair-use-d...

jopsen 6y ago
> if it is the most accurate way to refer to a good or service without misleading consumers as to its source. But if you're buying a service from AWS the source is not Elastic. You might be able to say compatible with elastic search. But using the name in your own product name seems unlikely to hold. I think this is shortsighted on Amazon's part, because it probably wouldn't cost all that much to make a joint offering. I would be curious to know where those lawsuits went. Because it seems like something that should have been resolved, and for which you could get an injunction. The problem is clearly that people think they are getting a service supported by ES, when they are getting a look-a-like copy service. Which is what trademarks are intended to resolve. In hindsight, maybe it would have worked better for ES, had they called the open source product something else, like how centos isn't called RedHat.
- mbreese 6y ago
  > clearly that people think they are getting a service supported by ES Something like this is also asserted in the OP. However, I'm not so sure that is the case. I don't think it's clear at all. Knowing that Elasticsearch is (was) open-source, I'd assume that I'm getting an AWS hosted installation of Elasticsearch... which is entirely accurate. If you can install the software on your own server, and AWS offers a managed version of it, I have no expectation that the original developers are involved at all. Ever since the original release, it looks like AWS has been much better at avoiding any mention of Elastic.co. The original announcement Tweet was definitely misleading. > In hindsight, maybe it would have worked better for ES, had they called the open source product something else, like how centos isn't called RedHat. I think this is the major problem, and you're right. Elasticsearch was the original trademark and is the accurate mark for the software. They only formed Elastic.co later, and this is where a lot of confusion originates. Elasticsearch != elastic.co It might be better for AWS to just include a disclaimer like "AWS Elasticsearch Service includes the open source Elasticsearch software, but is not supported by the original developers." Something like that...
Dylan16807 6y ago
> The real question is: was AWS misleading customers? Hell yes. I thought it was Amazon's trademark!