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A single word cannot benefit from copyright protection, but a character can. It may be difficult to argue that Anduril and the Palantíri were characters, and ev
by jl6 3y ago
A single word cannot benefit from copyright protection, but a character can. It may be difficult to argue that Anduril and the Palantíri were characters, and even more difficult to argue that the commercial products named after them were substantially similar. Trademark protection may be more applicable, but the Tolkien estate may not have registered (or defended) trademarks for those two names, and if they did it could be argued that a defense company is not confusable with the original material.
On the other hand, maybe both of those companies did secure a license from the Tolkien Estate.
- 1oooqooq 3y agothe owners of the blade runner ip did prevent google from using Nexus i think
- galangalalgol 3y agoNexus is from latin, and sonotype still uses the name.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoNexus is also an ordinary English word in current use.
- Someone 3y agoThat doesn’t necessarily make it free from trademark or copyright issues. Examples: “Apple” (https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/guidelinesfor3rdparties.html https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/guidelines..., https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/appletmlist.html https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/...), “Windows” (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/intellectualproperty/trademarks https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/intellectualproperty/t..., https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RWArzw https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RW...)
- thaumasiotes 3y agoBut it's more relevant than the fact that the same word exists in Latin. On a similar note, trademark issues can't apply to Bladerunner, because it isn't a vendor.
- johnbatch 3y agoCisco nexus is their brand of datacenter switches. But also found this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Nexus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Nexus “ Upon the announcement of the first Nexus device, the Nexus One, the estate of science fiction author Philip K. Dick claimed that the Nexus One name capitalized on intellectual property from Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and that the choice of name was a direct reference to the Nexus-6 series of androids in the novel.” Looks like there was a lawsuit, that was eventually settled out of court and we don’t know what was agreed.
- wkat4242 3y agoCisco ios is the name of their switch/router OS and that didn't stop Apple using it for theirs :)
- cherryteastain 3y agoNot an expert on IP law, so asking genuinely - is the threshold for copyright protection with respect to (unique) names whether the name belongs a character? So, Anduril and Palantir are okay, but Sauron or Aragorn would not be?
- jl6 3y agoIt's the character which may enjoy copyright protection, not the word in isolation. So if you write a story about a bad guy named Sauron who likes rings, you may be infringing, but if you launch a new candy bar named Sauron then it might be OK.
- Oarch 3y agoAnd into this bar he poured all his caramel, his nougat and his will to dominate all the world's snacking aisles...
- KineticLensman 3y agoIIRC Tolkien himself prevented someone from calling a hydrofoil ‘Shadowfax’ but I think this may have been a polite letter rather than a legal process