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cmdrfred 11y ago

Can't they use something trademarked in the api? for example you have to send 'Slack chat connect' to connect the api so open source stuff can't connect without violating their trademark?

glesica 11y ago
AFAIK trademarks don't work that way. You can "use" a trademark in a text or computer program more or less freely. What you can't do is do business under the trademarked name, or offer a competing (or substantially similar) product for sale that uses the trademarked name. Trademarks aren't so much about "IP protection" as they are about preventing consumer confusion, thus the standards are different. IANAL.
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  Makes sense, then maybe this would prevent him from listing slack anywhere on the repository as it might confuse users that this is a legitimate client.
  - cookiecaper 11y ago
    It's a matter of degree. CentOS infamously chose to refer to Red Hat as "a prominent North American Linux vendor" and completely deleted the term "Red Hat" from everything out of an abundance of caution after receiving threats from Red Hat's lawyers, but that's probably overboard. It's generally allowed to use trademarks as "nominative uses", i.e., in direct reference to another's product that's not designed to create confusion. He would probably be fine to put in his README something like "An open implementation of the chat API provided by Slack". He definitely shouldn't use the term "Slack" in the name of the repo. Like most non-flagrant potential IP violations, no one can really say for sure until a court hears the case and makes a judgement as to whether the use is fair or unfair, or likely to cause confusion among consumers or not. IANAL.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  Trademarks are about IP protection, but the exclusive right in the mark -- the thing that is property -- is the right to use the mark to market products in a particular domain.
teacup50 11y ago
This is something Apple does in their 'DSMOS' (don't steal Mac OS X) code (but they use copyright, not a trademark). Mac OS X looks for a set of firmware variables containing a non-formatted version of following haiku (reproduced for the purpose of artistic comment): our hard work by these words guarded please dont steal © Apple Computer Inc If you shipped a transparently Mac-compatible x86 machine, you'd have to include this haiku (in some form) in the firmware.
- anon4 11y ago
  Serious question: if I made a computer with the purpose of booting Mac OS X, noticed that it aborted after trying to read some bytes from the firmware, then wrote a program to iteratively test longer and longer sequences, would I be committing copyright infringement? What if I never look at the output of the program as text, but only as hex values?
  - teacup50 11y ago
    IANAL, but speaking generally, the courts seem to take a dim view at technical workarounds, and instead focus on the actual intention and result. In this particular case, I believe what you would have produced would be classified as a "circumvention" device under the DMCA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention). The state of "IP" law makes me very sad.
- e12e 11y ago
  If GNU is copyleft, is this then copy far right?
- wbl 11y ago
  Sega tried this to prevent third party games from running. It didn't work: because their string was required for functionality, it wasn't protected by copyright. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade for details.
- shabble 11y ago
  Cute. I remember some anti-spam outfit trying to "protect" emails with a copyrighted poem in the headers: http://www.oblomovka.com/writing/habeas%3A_the_antispam_haiku.php3 http://www.oblomovka.com/writing/habeas%3A_the_antispam_haik... I wonder how far back in OS(X) it dates?

tzs 11y ago

That cases raises an interesting precedent issue that I have not been able to find the answer to. Let's assume that the Supreme Court decides not to take the appeal, so the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that APIs are copyrightable stands. What courts is this precedent for? Generally, the way precedent works is that if appeals from court X go to court Y, then the decisions of court Y are precedent for court X. If court Z is not on the appeals path from X, then the decisions of court Z are not binding precedent for X. For copyright cases, appeals normally do NOT go to the CAFC. They go the Courts of Appeal for the circuit in which the court appealed from resides. E.g., copyright cases from district courts in the 2nd Circuit go to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. In general, that is the appeals path from the Federal district court. Copyright cases aren't specifically singled out. Oracle vs. Google was tried in the 9th Circuit. If it has just been a copyright case, the appeal would have went to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. However, it was also a patent case, and patent cases are singled out. They are explicitly diverted from the normal appeals path and go to the CAFC. If the case is also some other kind of case, such as a copyright case or an antitrust case, the CAFC is allowed to hear those aspects too. So does this mean that if P sues D in the 9th circuit over copyright, with no patent issues or any other issues that would bring the appeal to the CAFC, then the district court would only use the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for precedent (which I believe disagrees with CAFC), and ignore CAFC's Google vs. Oracle copyright ruling? Even more confusing, suppose P sues D over copyright and patents in the 9th Circuit. The district court figures that the case, if appealed, will go to the CAFC, and so follows CAFC precedent for the copyright aspects. Now suppose after the court rules, neither party appeals the court's decisions on any of the patent issues. The only appeal copyright issues. Does the case still go to CAFC? Or does it go the 9th Circuit? If it goes to the 9th Circuit, do they apply their own copyright precedent or CAFC precedent?