6 ms·

If consumers are so likely to confuse "S3" and "R2" that a court would grant trademark enforcement to S3 over this, then Mazda could have successfully sued BMW

If consumers are so likely to confuse "S3" and "R2" that a court would grant trademark enforcement to S3 over this, then Mazda could have successfully sued BMW over the confusion between MX-2 and M3, not to mention the total havoc such a court judgment would wreak upon the SMT labeling industry: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28777350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28777350 If Cloudflare had an entire AWS-simulation business and was making a clear effort to confuse customers about being "just like AWS, only not Amazon", then that might be an easier case to win, but Cloudflare seems pretty dead-set on being different than AWS (for example, they offer customer support), so that's unlikely. Amazon might still sue just as saber-rattling, but that would open them up to a SLAPP countersuit, against a party that has repeatedly demonstrated that it is willing to fund lawyers to punish those abusing the legal system — not to mention being mocked around the world for suing over a two character product name with no shared characters.

dorianmariefr 5y ago
AWS has customer support
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Their (paid) Enterprise Support is quite good, in my experience.
  - Hamuko 5y ago
    I've also had good experiences with the paid support when a deployment went horribly wrong. However, the support costs real money so it's back to Google for us. Luckily we're running on EKS now so it's probably easier to diagnose without a paid customer support rep than CodeDeploy.
dotancohen 5y ago
> Cloudflare seems pretty dead-set on being different > than AWS (for example, they offer customer support In my experience with problems that I have caused in my AWS environments, AWS has excellent support.
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  Lucky you! And I've recently had a bad experience with Cloudflare support, but I'm still making my offhand comment, because recently an AWS sales rep told me that the formal support process for one of their enterprise products is, paraphrased, "post to a discussion forum, and if I'm not on vacation, I'll see it and escalate internally to get you support" in as many words. I actually restated it to them to confirm and they paused noticeably before unhappily saying "Yes, that's correct". So it'll be a while before they earn back my respect in that particular regard — I may be upset at receiving poor support one time, but it's still better than not even having a ticketing system available from the other.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    AWS has 24/7 phone/email/chat support on the business and enterprise support plans (with severity-based SLAs) with not only a ticketing system but a case management API, and business hours support on their developer support plan. Your sales rep sounds like they just want to maintain control of the relationship.
    - floatingatoll 5y ago
      Circumstances are more complicated than I wish to go into here, but everyone did well at their jobs, so I have no latent upset with anyone over it.
    - datavirtue 5y ago
      On Azure you can file a ticket and an engineer will be blowing up your phone in short order. That's on the developer plan. The expensive enterprise planes are the exact same support only faster with a guaranteed SLA. Azure smokes AWS on docs, community, and support. Just my experience...over and over again. I'm at a huge high profile company where we have dedicated AWS staff. We have a dedicated email address at AWS to reach them. First time I tried to use the email address I got no reply at all. Took a while to figure out it had changed. I had formed my above-stated opinion long before that whilst trying to use various services and referring to their docs and community to navigate all the undocumented and out of date cruft. This is almost a decade now of the same experience.
rmbyrro 5y ago
I also have nothing to complain about AWS paid support
marcosdumay 5y ago
AFAIK, you can describe a product as "just like AWS, only not Amazon" without any problem as long as you are clear enough that it's not Amazon, and that "like" is really "like".
- geoduck14 5y ago
  IMHO, there is very little risk consumers will confuse Cloudfare for a major Cloud provider
  - fomine3 5y ago
    CloudFront and CloudFlare was confusing for me.
jen20 5y ago
The MX-3 started production in 1991, the M3 started production in 1986, so if anything BMW would have been suing Mazda in this situation ;-)
CRConrad 5y ago
> then Mazda could have successfully sued BMW over the confusion between MX-2 and M3 Assuming you mean the MX-3 (I can't find any reference to such a thing as a Mazda MX-2), it would hopefully have been the other way around -- BMW suing Mazda, since the M3 predates the MX-3 by half a decade: > M3 models have been produced for every generation of 3 Series since the E30 M3 was introduced in 1986. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_M3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_M3 > The Mazda MX-3[4] is a four-seat coupé manufactured and marketed by Mazda, introduced at the Geneva Auto Show in March 1991[5] and marketed for model years 1992–1998. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_MX-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_MX-3
- sundvor 5y ago
  These model numbers are rife, and hardly unique to the brands. If you were to shorten Tesla's Model 3, you'd have the TM3. And back to Mazda, they have a very successful "3" that _could_ be described as an M3. :) If anything it's nice that there's some consistency between at least a few brands on the numbering - if you see a 3, you'll know it's likely a medium sized car.
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  Ugh I looked up MX-2 instead of MX-3, thanks for the correction. The point stands, but it seems lost in the noise due to my off-by-one. Oh well.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    Sorry, I don't get what you mean? Yes, you were off by one in the model name, writing "MX-2" in stead of "MX-3", but both I and a sibling comment corrected for that, disussing the actually existing MX-3 in stead of the non-existent "MX-2". So what's the "noise" here, in your opinion? It was your actual point that was disproved. Yes, there is no such thing as a "Mazda MX-2", and never was. I went directly to Wikipedia last time, but that has pretty much every other car model that ever existed, so I saw no reason to believe a "Mazda MX-2" ever existed. And now that I've googled for your exact term, here are most of the top hits: Speculation from 2009 about a coming new model (possibly for 2013) -- which was sparsely reported even at the time, and apparently never materialised (since no actual specifications, prices, tests, or reviews show up in at least the first five pages of Google results): https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/mazda/32905/mazda-mx-2-revealed https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/mazda/32905/mazda-mx-2-reveale... https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1033621_mazda-working-on-entry-level-mx-2-roadster https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1033621_mazda-working-on... https://www.drive.com.au/news/2013-mazda-mx-2-rendered-speculation/ https://www.drive.com.au/news/2013-mazda-mx-2-rendered-specu... https://www.autoevolution.com/news/cgi-2013-mazda-mx-2-8195.html https://www.autoevolution.com/news/cgi-2013-mazda-mx-2-8195.... https://www.burlappcar.com/2009/06/mazda-mx2-coming-up.html https://www.burlappcar.com/2009/06/mazda-mx2-coming-up.html https://www.tv2.no/a/12383893/ https://www.tv2.no/a/12383893/ (in Norwegian) A few auto trading sites that purport to have pages related to it (my guess: from mistyped searches), but which turn out to contain other models (mostly MX-5's, with the odd Mazda 2 sprinkled in): https://www.gumtree.com/cars/uk/mazda/mazda+mx+2 https://www.gumtree.com/cars/uk/mazda/mazda+mx+2 https://www.newsnow.co.uk/classifieds/cars-vans-for-sale/mazda-mx-2.html https://www.newsnow.co.uk/classifieds/cars-vans-for-sale/maz... https://cars.trovit.co.uk/used-cars/mazda-mx-2 https://cars.trovit.co.uk/used-cars/mazda-mx-2 https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-autos/mazda-mx-2/k0c216 https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-autos/mazda-mx-2/k0c216 (in German) And that's it. So, to sum up: 1) There is no "Mazda MX-2", there never was. 2) The only "noise" here was your typo; if you were talking about actually existing cars, you must obviously have meant the MX-3. You were after all talking about model names clashing with the M 3. 3) This was corrected for in the discussion; what was discussed was your actual point, not the "noise" (your typo). 4) If for some incomprehensible reason you actually meant the non-existent "Mazda MX-2", our point against it stands even firmer than with the MX-3: The BMW M3 would have predated the "MX-2", had it materialised in 2013, by 27 years in stead of merely five. If anyone had been able to sue anyone, it would still have been BMW, not Mazda. So no, your point doesn't stand. And I'm utterly baffled: Where are you -- still! -- claiming to have "looked up MX-2" from???
geoduck14 5y ago
>If Cloudflare had an entire AWS-simulation business and was making a clear effort to confuse customers about being "just like AWS, only not Amazon", then that might be an easier case to win Well, I'm pretty sure THAT'S not a problem they have to worry about any time soon.

dorianmariefr 5y ago

AWS has customer support

sokoloff 5y ago
Their (paid) Enterprise Support is quite good, in my experience.
- Hamuko 5y ago
  I've also had good experiences with the paid support when a deployment went horribly wrong. However, the support costs real money so it's back to Google for us. Luckily we're running on EKS now so it's probably easier to diagnose without a paid customer support rep than CodeDeploy.

dotancohen 5y ago

> Cloudflare seems pretty dead-set on being different > than AWS (for example, they offer customer support In my experience with problems that I have caused in my AWS environments, AWS has excellent support.

floatingatoll 5y ago
Lucky you! And I've recently had a bad experience with Cloudflare support, but I'm still making my offhand comment, because recently an AWS sales rep told me that the formal support process for one of their enterprise products is, paraphrased, "post to a discussion forum, and if I'm not on vacation, I'll see it and escalate internally to get you support" in as many words. I actually restated it to them to confirm and they paused noticeably before unhappily saying "Yes, that's correct". So it'll be a while before they earn back my respect in that particular regard — I may be upset at receiving poor support one time, but it's still better than not even having a ticketing system available from the other.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  AWS has 24/7 phone/email/chat support on the business and enterprise support plans (with severity-based SLAs) with not only a ticketing system but a case management API, and business hours support on their developer support plan. Your sales rep sounds like they just want to maintain control of the relationship.
  - floatingatoll 5y ago
    Circumstances are more complicated than I wish to go into here, but everyone did well at their jobs, so I have no latent upset with anyone over it.
  - datavirtue 5y ago
    On Azure you can file a ticket and an engineer will be blowing up your phone in short order. That's on the developer plan. The expensive enterprise planes are the exact same support only faster with a guaranteed SLA. Azure smokes AWS on docs, community, and support. Just my experience...over and over again. I'm at a huge high profile company where we have dedicated AWS staff. We have a dedicated email address at AWS to reach them. First time I tried to use the email address I got no reply at all. Took a while to figure out it had changed. I had formed my above-stated opinion long before that whilst trying to use various services and referring to their docs and community to navigate all the undocumented and out of date cruft. This is almost a decade now of the same experience.

rmbyrro 5y ago

I also have nothing to complain about AWS paid support

marcosdumay 5y ago

AFAIK, you can describe a product as "just like AWS, only not Amazon" without any problem as long as you are clear enough that it's not Amazon, and that "like" is really "like".

geoduck14 5y ago
IMHO, there is very little risk consumers will confuse Cloudfare for a major Cloud provider
- fomine3 5y ago
  CloudFront and CloudFlare was confusing for me.

jen20 5y ago

The MX-3 started production in 1991, the M3 started production in 1986, so if anything BMW would have been suing Mazda in this situation ;-)

CRConrad 5y ago

> then Mazda could have successfully sued BMW over the confusion between MX-2 and M3 Assuming you mean the MX-3 (I can't find any reference to such a thing as a Mazda MX-2), it would hopefully have been the other way around -- BMW suing Mazda, since the M3 predates the MX-3 by half a decade: > M3 models have been produced for every generation of 3 Series since the E30 M3 was introduced in 1986. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_M3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_M3 > The Mazda MX-3[4] is a four-seat coupé manufactured and marketed by Mazda, introduced at the Geneva Auto Show in March 1991[5] and marketed for model years 1992–1998. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_MX-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_MX-3

sundvor 5y ago
These model numbers are rife, and hardly unique to the brands. If you were to shorten Tesla's Model 3, you'd have the TM3. And back to Mazda, they have a very successful "3" that _could_ be described as an M3. :) If anything it's nice that there's some consistency between at least a few brands on the numbering - if you see a 3, you'll know it's likely a medium sized car.
floatingatoll 5y ago
Ugh I looked up MX-2 instead of MX-3, thanks for the correction. The point stands, but it seems lost in the noise due to my off-by-one. Oh well.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  Sorry, I don't get what you mean? Yes, you were off by one in the model name, writing "MX-2" in stead of "MX-3", but both I and a sibling comment corrected for that, disussing the actually existing MX-3 in stead of the non-existent "MX-2". So what's the "noise" here, in your opinion? It was your actual point that was disproved. Yes, there is no such thing as a "Mazda MX-2", and never was. I went directly to Wikipedia last time, but that has pretty much every other car model that ever existed, so I saw no reason to believe a "Mazda MX-2" ever existed. And now that I've googled for your exact term, here are most of the top hits: Speculation from 2009 about a coming new model (possibly for 2013) -- which was sparsely reported even at the time, and apparently never materialised (since no actual specifications, prices, tests, or reviews show up in at least the first five pages of Google results): https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/mazda/32905/mazda-mx-2-revealed https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/mazda/32905/mazda-mx-2-reveale... https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1033621_mazda-working-on-entry-level-mx-2-roadster https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1033621_mazda-working-on... https://www.drive.com.au/news/2013-mazda-mx-2-rendered-speculation/ https://www.drive.com.au/news/2013-mazda-mx-2-rendered-specu... https://www.autoevolution.com/news/cgi-2013-mazda-mx-2-8195.html https://www.autoevolution.com/news/cgi-2013-mazda-mx-2-8195.... https://www.burlappcar.com/2009/06/mazda-mx2-coming-up.html https://www.burlappcar.com/2009/06/mazda-mx2-coming-up.html https://www.tv2.no/a/12383893/ https://www.tv2.no/a/12383893/ (in Norwegian) A few auto trading sites that purport to have pages related to it (my guess: from mistyped searches), but which turn out to contain other models (mostly MX-5's, with the odd Mazda 2 sprinkled in): https://www.gumtree.com/cars/uk/mazda/mazda+mx+2 https://www.gumtree.com/cars/uk/mazda/mazda+mx+2 https://www.newsnow.co.uk/classifieds/cars-vans-for-sale/mazda-mx-2.html https://www.newsnow.co.uk/classifieds/cars-vans-for-sale/maz... https://cars.trovit.co.uk/used-cars/mazda-mx-2 https://cars.trovit.co.uk/used-cars/mazda-mx-2 https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-autos/mazda-mx-2/k0c216 https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-autos/mazda-mx-2/k0c216 (in German) And that's it. So, to sum up: 1) There is no "Mazda MX-2", there never was. 2) The only "noise" here was your typo; if you were talking about actually existing cars, you must obviously have meant the MX-3. You were after all talking about model names clashing with the M 3. 3) This was corrected for in the discussion; what was discussed was your actual point, not the "noise" (your typo). 4) If for some incomprehensible reason you actually meant the non-existent "Mazda MX-2", our point against it stands even firmer than with the MX-3: The BMW M3 would have predated the "MX-2", had it materialised in 2013, by 27 years in stead of merely five. If anyone had been able to sue anyone, it would still have been BMW, not Mazda. So no, your point doesn't stand. And I'm utterly baffled: Where are you -- still! -- claiming to have "looked up MX-2" from???

geoduck14 5y ago

>If Cloudflare had an entire AWS-simulation business and was making a clear effort to confuse customers about being "just like AWS, only not Amazon", then that might be an easier case to win Well, I'm pretty sure THAT'S not a problem they have to worry about any time soon.