trademarks [was: xulrunner 2.0 in rawhide (F15) bundles several system libs]

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 10:08 AM, Michal Schmidt <mschmidt at redhat.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Of course. But there's in fact no disagreement, only looking at
> different aspects of the same thing.
>
> Why do you think the copying takes place? Because the companies have
> built a good reputation and brand, allowing them to increase profit.
>
> Good quality => good reputation => solid brand => better profits.
>
> Then copyists try to get better profits too without bothering to
> build their own good reputation, by deceiving the buyers into thinking
> the original company with good reputation produced their goods.
>
> I'm really quite surprised about this thread. Of all the stuff
> often put under the confusing term "intellectual property" I expected
> trademarks to be the least controversial.

Exactly.  I often describe trademarks as a kind of consumer protection
law— but instead of using the blunt tool of government driven
enforcement it relies on the existence of an interested party (the
trademark holder) to provide the protection at their own expense with
enforcement via civil law.

This has advantages (it's very flexible, enforcement can be made to
match the need, the public doesn't need to pay for it directly) and
disadvantages (it suffers if the interested party is either not
interested enough or too interested), but regardless it's pretty much
something categorically different from, say, patents... which have no
consumer-protective properties and which are very difficult to escape
(compared to changing a package name/branding).