8 ms·

Oracle files notice of appearance for JavaScript trademark [pdf]

107 points by cfnewsperson1 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
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bhouston 2y ago
If Deno loses, do they have to pay Oracle's super expensive lawyer fees? I worry that the fees are probably ridiculously high.
- mikeyouse 2y ago
  Looks like not typically unless the case is exceptional based on my reading of: https://www.tuckerellis.com/webfiles/FTD-1908-Lauridsen-Brookey.pdf https://www.tuckerellis.com/webfiles/FTD-1908-Lauridsen-Broo...
- kopecs 2y ago
  In America each party typically bears their own costs.
  - bhouston 2y ago
    Ah! I just checked with Claude and it says: > In the United States, the general rule is known as the "American Rule" - each party typically pays their own attorney's fees and court costs, regardless of who wins the case. This is different from many other countries that follow the "English Rule" where the losing party pays the winner's legal fees.
    - tzs 2y ago
      For the curious, one reason for the difference in rules is the different approaches to enforcing rights. In the US there is a tendency to make private civil suits for damages a big part of this, and to rely less on government agencies to investigate and take enforcement actions. In much of the rest of the world the is more of a tendency to have government agencies handle it. It's enough of a difference that people in the rest of the world often don't even know that a private civil suit is an option. (You can see this with GDPR. Article 79 gives individuals a right to sue, but most people seem to think their only option is to complain to a government data protection authority). Anyway, since the US is depending on private civil suits to enforce rights the English rule of winner pays could greatly discourage those who are not well off (who are often the people most likely to have their rights violated) from suing when their rights violator has significantly more resources.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
AceJohnny2 2y ago
Context: "Dear Oracle, Please Release the JavaScript Trademark" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32709870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32709870
- diogocp 2y ago
  The real context is that Deno recently filed a petition to cancel the trademark: https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=92086835 https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=92086835
  - gnabgib 2y ago
    Yes, and Ryan Dahl (creator of Node and Deno), posted Dear Oracle, Please Release the JavaScript Trademark on his website to market that petition.
    - jey 2y ago
      The term “petition” is being used here in a technical legal sense. Colloquially we’d probably just call it a “lawsuit” challenging the JacvsScript trademark.
  - thrdbndndn 2y ago
    That is where this doc directly came from, not the context (i.e. background) of this event.
AceJohnny2 2y ago
IP lawyers in the comments, what does this mean? It just says "NOTICE OF APPERANCE (sic) OF COUNSEL". Is it just a bureaucratic step where Oracle says "we're not ignoring this"?
- Macha 2y ago
  Not a lawyer, but the main purpose of this document is to tell the judge who Oracle's lawyers are for this case.
- kotaKat 2y ago
  Basically saying "Hi, we're the lawyers for Oracle, and we've told the lawyers at Deno that we'll be in touch."
- cxr 2y ago
  I'm not a trial attorney, but I've done more than my share of dealing with my own civil suits, and your guess is pretty much bang-on. The rules of civil procedure generally require that the defendant in a suit file a response within a prescribed timeline, even if the response just amounts to saying, "yeah, we're here". That's what the "as required pursuant to 37 CFR §2.119 and TRADEMARK TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD MANUAL OF PROCEDURE §113.04" part is about. I'm not familiar with the specifics about federal procedure for trademark suits, and I'm not going to go look, but if you chase those references down, you're almost sure to find something like this. In some jurisdictions, failure to enter an appearance is reason enough for the other party to request a hearing to be granted default judgment, and for the court to set a date for the hearing, hear the request, and then grant it unless the defendant had a good reason for not filing a timely response. (The other comments aren't strictly wrong, but mere information about who a given party's lawyers are is generally communicated through notices for designation of counsel.)
- DannyBee 2y ago
  IP lawyer here - yes, this is just a bureaucratic step. In practice, even if they chose to later do nothing, they would still file a notice of appearance. It would be silly not to, since in this case (before the TTAB) it would lead to a default judgement that would be very hard to get out of. Even if you later choose to release the trademark, you'd still want to see all the court documents, etc.
neom 2y ago
Big generally good full service law firm (200+ partners) VS quite small but highly specialized law firm (3 partners). https://www.hollandhart.com/ncdavis https://www.hollandhart.com/ncdavis for Oracle, https://www.gerbenlaw.com/about/eric-perrott https://www.gerbenlaw.com/about/eric-perrott for Deno. Interesting indeed.
chris_wot 2y ago
Yeah, good luck. That trademark was diluted some time ago.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Havoc 2y ago
Clsssic oracle
- pc86 2y ago
  Classic Oracle, filing some bureaucratic paperwork letting the court know they have representation in this case?
NotYourLawyer 2y ago
No surprise here. If someone files to cancel your trademark and you want to fight it, you file an appearance.
- thayne 2y ago
  The surprise (kind of) is that Oracle wants to fight it.
  - 7thpower 2y ago
    They have something valuable and they gain nothing from giving it up.
    - thayne 2y ago
      What value do they get from it? And in order to keep it, they must expend resources, and negative PR (although Oracle already had a bad enough reputation, that this would probably be negligible).
      - 7thpower 2y ago
        > negative PR Laughs in Larry Ellison It is just transactional corporate logic. You do not give up something unless you get something of greater value in return. You do not do things for good will, you do things for PR, etc. and sure as hell don’t let them fly under the radar. If some middle or senior manager let that fly without a blessing from the top, they would be ostracized. I’m not saying it’s right, but I’ve been part of that culture and understand it very well. Part of owning trademarks is defending them, and Oracle has plenty, so the cost is de minimis. Even if the trademark is not doing anything for them now, it provides optionally they would not otherwise have. It may also be a negotiation tool down the road.
  - curtis3389 2y ago
    “…You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think ‘oh, the lawnmower hates me’ – lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle.” – Bryan Cantrill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s
m463 2y ago
Maybe we could change the filetype from .js to .bho https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litigation_involving_Apple_Inc.#Libel_dispute_with_Carl_Sagan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litigation_involving_Apple_Inc...
- diggan 2y ago
  Seems .law (lawyers are wimps) is more fitting
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- metadat 2y ago
  That'd require giving Oracle unwarranted attention. The Sagan bit was funny because Apple engineers transitioned from loving him to resenting him :)
- thrdbndndn 2y ago
  I just learned about this case today. Based purely on the Wikipedia description, Sagan's request seems reasonable, from a moral perspective at least. I have no idea why Apple (or its engineers) would be so butthurt about it.
  - yesco 2y ago
    Because it was just a silly internal code name for an unreleased product and Carl Sagon was just being a killjoy to his own fans. That he continued to escalate with lawsuits makes him look ridiculous frankly...
    - thrdbndndn 2y ago
      His reason was "concerned that it would become a product endorsement," and it was after the name was "publicized," which sounds reasonable to me. The joy can only go so far, IMHO. If the namesake person asked for it, you comply—pretty simple. I can totally see why people aren’t comfortable with their name being used without permission, even without the endorsement concern.
thayne 2y ago
I'm really curious about Oracle's motivation for fighting this. What value do they see in continuing to hold a trademark they aren't really using, and no one associates with them anyway?
- genter 2y ago
  Do you ask a lawnmower why it chewed your hand off after sticking it in there?
  - Cpoll 2y ago
    For those who don't know: https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2315 https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2315
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- toyg 2y ago
  You're looking at it wrong: why ever renounce anything that is already yours? Oracle should be assumed to always take the greediest and most antisocial position in any legal or economic matter.
- swyx 2y ago
  oracle is a law firm that happens to sell a database
- ralph84 2y ago
  It’s their asset. It came with their $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun. I know it’s popular to hate on Oracle, and it’s deserved in many cases, but any company in this situation would defend their IP. Obviously it has value or somebody wouldn’t be trying to cancel it.
  - tomxor 2y ago
    > It’s their asset To be clear, the trademark is their asset. Sun trademarked the name JavaScript in 1997, for reasons assumed to be related to Java, probably in anticipation of a use case that never arrived. This had nothing to do with the existing language JavaScript which was created in 1993, and had no relationship with Sun. > Obviously it has value or somebody wouldn’t be trying to cancel it. "Somebody" is trying to cancel it because Oracle have been blindly defending it, not because it has any business value to Oracle. The JavaScript language has precedence, and today it's sheer popularity and major role in open web standard means Oracle could not possibly benefit from using it for any business purpose due to the strong existing association. It's only practical purpose is to torment the JavaScript community and further cement Oracle's reputation as a litigious cancer of the technology world. They blindly defend it because they are a mindless lawnmower that consumed it, not because they are the wiser and know it has value.
alberth 2y ago
This seems like Deno poked the bear, and now the bear feels forced to defend itself.
- benatkin 2y ago
  More likely they have everything to gain and nothing to lose. They can do it in their sleep, as far as those managing business strategy at Oracle go. The legal department will handle the legal stuff and the PR department will the PR stuff if needed (unlikely).
InMice 2y ago
They didn't catch their misspelling of "appearance" on page 2 of this filing? It's only 2 pages long and they missed this, really?
- DannyBee 2y ago
  This appears to be somebody's template that has this misspelling and lots of people have used. I can easily find a bunch of nearly identically worried ones. See, e.g, https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/ttabvue-91291646-OPP-4.pdf https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/ttabvue-91291646-OPP-4.pdf
benatkin 2y ago
[flagged]
jahewson 2y ago
TypeScript solves this.
- peutetre 2y ago
  WebAssembly solves it better.
  - khana 2y ago
    [dead]
- voxelghost 2y ago
  I mean, its just about the trademark. ECMAScript solves this.
- tylerchilds 2y ago
  this is my favorite take. “oracle’s trademark sucks, long live microsoft’s trademark”
jonathanhefner 2y ago
JavaScript is dead. Long live YavaScript.
- dboreham 2y ago
  JS, ECMAScript.
theendisney 2y ago
I thought Java was a country.
dboreham 2y ago
Oracle re-invents the PNG.
cokeandpepsi 2y ago
[dead]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bni 2y ago
It was called LiveScript at first. It's a better name anyway why not use it?
j16sdiz 2y ago
This is a much better url: https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=92086835 https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=92086835 In Claim 2, Deno shows Oracle basically just capture nodejs website and calms this trademark is still in use. How crazy this is.
cr125rider 2y ago
It is wild how far Oracle has fallen. All the way down to bureaucratic patent trolls. Sad.

107 points by cfnewsperson1 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

If Deno loses, do they have to pay Oracle's super expensive lawyer fees? I worry that the fees are probably ridiculously high.

mikeyouse 2y ago
Looks like not typically unless the case is exceptional based on my reading of: https://www.tuckerellis.com/webfiles/FTD-1908-Lauridsen-Brookey.pdf https://www.tuckerellis.com/webfiles/FTD-1908-Lauridsen-Broo...
kopecs 2y ago
In America each party typically bears their own costs.
- bhouston 2y ago
  Ah! I just checked with Claude and it says: > In the United States, the general rule is known as the "American Rule" - each party typically pays their own attorney's fees and court costs, regardless of who wins the case. This is different from many other countries that follow the "English Rule" where the losing party pays the winner's legal fees.
  - tzs 2y ago
    For the curious, one reason for the difference in rules is the different approaches to enforcing rights. In the US there is a tendency to make private civil suits for damages a big part of this, and to rely less on government agencies to investigate and take enforcement actions. In much of the rest of the world the is more of a tendency to have government agencies handle it. It's enough of a difference that people in the rest of the world often don't even know that a private civil suit is an option. (You can see this with GDPR. Article 79 gives individuals a right to sue, but most people seem to think their only option is to complain to a government data protection authority). Anyway, since the US is depending on private civil suits to enforce rights the English rule of winner pays could greatly discourage those who are not well off (who are often the people most likely to have their rights violated) from suing when their rights violator has significantly more resources.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

AceJohnny2 2y ago

Context: "Dear Oracle, Please Release the JavaScript Trademark" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32709870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32709870

diogocp 2y ago
The real context is that Deno recently filed a petition to cancel the trademark: https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=92086835 https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=92086835
- gnabgib 2y ago
  Yes, and Ryan Dahl (creator of Node and Deno), posted Dear Oracle, Please Release the JavaScript Trademark on his website to market that petition.
  - jey 2y ago
    The term “petition” is being used here in a technical legal sense. Colloquially we’d probably just call it a “lawsuit” challenging the JacvsScript trademark.
- thrdbndndn 2y ago
  That is where this doc directly came from, not the context (i.e. background) of this event.

AceJohnny2 2y ago

IP lawyers in the comments, what does this mean? It just says "NOTICE OF APPERANCE (sic) OF COUNSEL". Is it just a bureaucratic step where Oracle says "we're not ignoring this"?

Macha 2y ago
Not a lawyer, but the main purpose of this document is to tell the judge who Oracle's lawyers are for this case.
kotaKat 2y ago
Basically saying "Hi, we're the lawyers for Oracle, and we've told the lawyers at Deno that we'll be in touch."
cxr 2y ago
I'm not a trial attorney, but I've done more than my share of dealing with my own civil suits, and your guess is pretty much bang-on. The rules of civil procedure generally require that the defendant in a suit file a response within a prescribed timeline, even if the response just amounts to saying, "yeah, we're here". That's what the "as required pursuant to 37 CFR §2.119 and TRADEMARK TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD MANUAL OF PROCEDURE §113.04" part is about. I'm not familiar with the specifics about federal procedure for trademark suits, and I'm not going to go look, but if you chase those references down, you're almost sure to find something like this. In some jurisdictions, failure to enter an appearance is reason enough for the other party to request a hearing to be granted default judgment, and for the court to set a date for the hearing, hear the request, and then grant it unless the defendant had a good reason for not filing a timely response. (The other comments aren't strictly wrong, but mere information about who a given party's lawyers are is generally communicated through notices for designation of counsel.)
DannyBee 2y ago
IP lawyer here - yes, this is just a bureaucratic step. In practice, even if they chose to later do nothing, they would still file a notice of appearance. It would be silly not to, since in this case (before the TTAB) it would lead to a default judgement that would be very hard to get out of. Even if you later choose to release the trademark, you'd still want to see all the court documents, etc.

neom 2y ago

Big generally good full service law firm (200+ partners) VS quite small but highly specialized law firm (3 partners). https://www.hollandhart.com/ncdavis https://www.hollandhart.com/ncdavis for Oracle, https://www.gerbenlaw.com/about/eric-perrott https://www.gerbenlaw.com/about/eric-perrott for Deno. Interesting indeed.

chris_wot 2y ago

Yeah, good luck. That trademark was diluted some time ago.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Havoc 2y ago

Clsssic oracle

pc86 2y ago
Classic Oracle, filing some bureaucratic paperwork letting the court know they have representation in this case?

NotYourLawyer 2y ago

No surprise here. If someone files to cancel your trademark and you want to fight it, you file an appearance.

thayne 2y ago
The surprise (kind of) is that Oracle wants to fight it.
- 7thpower 2y ago
  They have something valuable and they gain nothing from giving it up.
  - thayne 2y ago
    What value do they get from it? And in order to keep it, they must expend resources, and negative PR (although Oracle already had a bad enough reputation, that this would probably be negligible).
    - 7thpower 2y ago
      > negative PR Laughs in Larry Ellison It is just transactional corporate logic. You do not give up something unless you get something of greater value in return. You do not do things for good will, you do things for PR, etc. and sure as hell don’t let them fly under the radar. If some middle or senior manager let that fly without a blessing from the top, they would be ostracized. I’m not saying it’s right, but I’ve been part of that culture and understand it very well. Part of owning trademarks is defending them, and Oracle has plenty, so the cost is de minimis. Even if the trademark is not doing anything for them now, it provides optionally they would not otherwise have. It may also be a negotiation tool down the road.
- curtis3389 2y ago
  “…You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think ‘oh, the lawnmower hates me’ – lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle.” – Bryan Cantrill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s

m463 2y ago

Maybe we could change the filetype from .js to .bho https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litigation_involving_Apple_Inc.#Libel_dispute_with_Carl_Sagan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litigation_involving_Apple_Inc...

diggan 2y ago
Seems .law (lawyers are wimps) is more fitting
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
metadat 2y ago
That'd require giving Oracle unwarranted attention. The Sagan bit was funny because Apple engineers transitioned from loving him to resenting him :)
thrdbndndn 2y ago
I just learned about this case today. Based purely on the Wikipedia description, Sagan's request seems reasonable, from a moral perspective at least. I have no idea why Apple (or its engineers) would be so butthurt about it.
- yesco 2y ago
  Because it was just a silly internal code name for an unreleased product and Carl Sagon was just being a killjoy to his own fans. That he continued to escalate with lawsuits makes him look ridiculous frankly...
  - thrdbndndn 2y ago
    His reason was "concerned that it would become a product endorsement," and it was after the name was "publicized," which sounds reasonable to me. The joy can only go so far, IMHO. If the namesake person asked for it, you comply—pretty simple. I can totally see why people aren’t comfortable with their name being used without permission, even without the endorsement concern.

thayne 2y ago

I'm really curious about Oracle's motivation for fighting this. What value do they see in continuing to hold a trademark they aren't really using, and no one associates with them anyway?

genter 2y ago
Do you ask a lawnmower why it chewed your hand off after sticking it in there?
- Cpoll 2y ago
  For those who don't know: https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2315 https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2315
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
toyg 2y ago
You're looking at it wrong: why ever renounce anything that is already yours? Oracle should be assumed to always take the greediest and most antisocial position in any legal or economic matter.
swyx 2y ago
oracle is a law firm that happens to sell a database
ralph84 2y ago
It’s their asset. It came with their $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun. I know it’s popular to hate on Oracle, and it’s deserved in many cases, but any company in this situation would defend their IP. Obviously it has value or somebody wouldn’t be trying to cancel it.
- tomxor 2y ago
  > It’s their asset To be clear, the trademark is their asset. Sun trademarked the name JavaScript in 1997, for reasons assumed to be related to Java, probably in anticipation of a use case that never arrived. This had nothing to do with the existing language JavaScript which was created in 1993, and had no relationship with Sun. > Obviously it has value or somebody wouldn’t be trying to cancel it. "Somebody" is trying to cancel it because Oracle have been blindly defending it, not because it has any business value to Oracle. The JavaScript language has precedence, and today it's sheer popularity and major role in open web standard means Oracle could not possibly benefit from using it for any business purpose due to the strong existing association. It's only practical purpose is to torment the JavaScript community and further cement Oracle's reputation as a litigious cancer of the technology world. They blindly defend it because they are a mindless lawnmower that consumed it, not because they are the wiser and know it has value.

alberth 2y ago

This seems like Deno poked the bear, and now the bear feels forced to defend itself.

benatkin 2y ago
More likely they have everything to gain and nothing to lose. They can do it in their sleep, as far as those managing business strategy at Oracle go. The legal department will handle the legal stuff and the PR department will the PR stuff if needed (unlikely).

InMice 2y ago

They didn't catch their misspelling of "appearance" on page 2 of this filing? It's only 2 pages long and they missed this, really?

DannyBee 2y ago
This appears to be somebody's template that has this misspelling and lots of people have used. I can easily find a bunch of nearly identically worried ones. See, e.g, https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/ttabvue-91291646-OPP-4.pdf https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/ttabvue-91291646-OPP-4.pdf

benatkin 2y ago

[flagged]

jahewson 2y ago

TypeScript solves this.

peutetre 2y ago
WebAssembly solves it better.
- khana 2y ago
  [dead]
voxelghost 2y ago
I mean, its just about the trademark. ECMAScript solves this.
tylerchilds 2y ago
this is my favorite take. “oracle’s trademark sucks, long live microsoft’s trademark”

jonathanhefner 2y ago

JavaScript is dead. Long live YavaScript.

dboreham 2y ago
JS, ECMAScript.

theendisney 2y ago

I thought Java was a country.

dboreham 2y ago

Oracle re-invents the PNG.

cokeandpepsi 2y ago

[dead]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

bni 2y ago

It was called LiveScript at first. It's a better name anyway why not use it?

j16sdiz 2y ago

This is a much better url: https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=92086835 https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=92086835 In Claim 2, Deno shows Oracle basically just capture nodejs website and calms this trademark is still in use. How crazy this is.

cr125rider 2y ago

It is wild how far Oracle has fallen. All the way down to bureaucratic patent trolls. Sad.