|
|
|
| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 15 2013 @ 11:12 AM EDT |
Hej, I made the above pessimistic post - I would regard it as realistic. My main
points were that attacking a trademark is not easy or cheap and if you do it
without a specialised lawyer or a patent attorney, you're extremely likely to
lose. If you have a good attorney, your chances go up, obviously.
The approach you suggest looks interesting, but would take significant economic
clout to pull off. A few remarks:
You don't need to file for copyright protection in Germany, copyrights arise
automatically with the creation of a protectable work (not every term is
protetable). There may be a chance that the creator of "Hackathon" may
succesfully claim a copyright. This cannot be checked without significant effort
and documentation (which costs money). The copyright owner could in principle
(meaning: perhaps) forbid the use of the word to the trademark holder or demand
cancellation or transfer of the trademark. It's impossible to judge the success
chances without detailed information.
An older right for the business use of Hackathon may have arisen if somebody
used it for conferences in Germany. Preferably over a long period of time and/or
consistently. Depends on the details.
Also, for some of the goods and services, Hackathon may be seen as descriptive
(perhaps events and/or in computing services); it has to be understood by the
circle of people addressed, which appear to be event organizers and/or normal
consumers, but not explicitly hackers (different g/s may have different
addressees). It appears unlikely that normal consumers will have an expicit
understanding of Hackathon describing anything specifically. Taking into account
the rather low level of English understood in Germany, my gut says this is
unlikely to fly. However, with research and a good attorney, who knows -
trademark law is complicated and rather unpredictable. Anyway, a simple
cancellation request without significant financial effort (for research and
attorney) is not likely to succeed.
A European trademark on "Hackmeet" or "Hackfest" for
computing events appears to be unlikely to be registered, as it appears
descriptive at least in English (European Trademarks have to pass the
descriptiveness test in all major European languages). You'd need significant
clout to pull that off (and a good attorney or a strange Examiner at the OHIM).
Also, these terms seem to be a good deal more descriptive than Hackathon even in
German.
Btw., a trademark only protects the protected word in the context of the
protected goods and services and may be valid for some registered g/s, but
invalid for others. On short notice, the most promising and propably cheapest
way would be to check whether the normal use of "Hackathon" for hacker
meetings even falls under the goods and services protected. It is not
necessarily so that even printing Hackathon with date/location on a T-Shirt
would infringe on the trademark, as long as the consumer doesn't assume that
this is a producer's mark. Of course, that depends on the details of each case.
Also, it may be possible to be aggressive on several levels to convince the
trademark owner to delete the trademark - the company does not seem to be that
big. However, their representatives probably now what they are doing, the firm
is reasonbably well known and unlikely to be easily cowed.
There are also some more esoteric approaches which might be helpful, but depend
on the details.
Did I mention that trademark law is complicated and dirty and even most lawyers
are not good at it?
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
|
|
|
|
