Re: New: Tazlure (free, open-ended, www, human, fantasy, rpg)

From: Jason Paul McCartan <jasonm@mindshiftdesign.com>

Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 01:07:10 +0000

MadCentral wrote:

>>>It doesn't matter if it's registered or not. If the trademark has been
>>>put
> in use, that makes it active. Of course, proving ownership and prior use
> of a trademark them becomes important. <<
>
> I cant speak for US law, but I dont believe thats correct in Europe.  If
> you do not register a trademark you do not hold any rights on it at all.

In the US here, you don't need to register a trademark. You simply have to
put the TM symbol next to the logo, name etc. This can only be done after
you've been using it publicly. If you want added protection you can apply
to register it. If you complete registration, you stop using TM and instead
use R as the symbol next to the product.

>>>Two products can shared the same name and be trademarks if they're not
> sufficiently similar and not intended to be used in the same way.<<
>
> Thats right, but in this instance, two turn-based games would certainly be
> considered an infringement if one of them was registered and chose to take
> issue with the other.  "Sufficiently Different" usually means something
> like, its okay for Dominos to call a new pizza the "Prometheus", but a
> board game might be seen as too similar an area.

Yup. That's what I was getting at. If the operate within the same market
then there's some infringment going on. There's also precedence if there
are "distinct similarities" between the products trademarks. So if I made a
web-based game called Haunted House that was similar to your game, I'd be
infringing on your trademark of Haunted Manor. If I made the name "Spooky
Treasure House", then I wouldn't be, even though the game may be similar in
function and play. (Not that I'm going to do that <g>).

--
Jason Paul McCartan

References

Re: New: Tazlure (free, open-ended, www, human, fantasy, rpg)
Jason Paul McCartan <jasonm@mindshiftdesign.com>
Thu, 13 Jun 2002 22:20:48 +0000
Re: New: Tazlure (free, open-ended, www, human, fantasy, rpg)
madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral)
Thu, 13 Jun 2002 23:50:36 +0000