[asterisk-biz] Digium enforcing its trademarks

[Trixter aka Bret McDanel]

why would stating information that is publicly available about the
existance of digium put me in a position to comment at all on google?
Google and digium are two totally separate companies.  I was only
commenting on the 'transferred' comment that was made.

However on the single word 'asterisk' the following may illuminate the
issue a bit.

http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=d4l15a.1.1&p_search=searchss&p_L=50&BackReference=&p_plural=yes&p_s_PARA1=&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA1%24LD&expr=PARA1+AND+PARA2&p_s_PARA2=asterisk&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA2%24COMB&p_op_ALL=AND&a_default=search&a_search=Submit+Query&a_search=Submit+Query

as you can see there are several 'asterisk' trademarks.

You can also see 'asterisk appliance', 'digium asterisk world',
'asterisk now' and  'asteriskdialer' as related things.  These were done
in 2007.  asteriskdialer is by someone other than digium.  Other related
might include "asteriskfree" which is owned by a bank, and 'web
asterisk' which has nothing to do with telephony it seems.


>From security doors, to wine, to music, to digium, to badminton racket
strings, to some promo type company, to sun tanning beds, to orthopedic
braces, to indoor tanning lotions.  Some are abandoned, most arent, as
you can see the single word "asterisk" is claimed by many.

http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=d4l15a.3.10
marked as 'design PLUS words, letters and/or numbers' which includes the
digium logo, asterisk by itself doesnt seem to count with that filing.

http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=d4l15a.3.14
that one covers just the word 'asterisk' and is digium, registered 2005.


Related things:
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=d4l15a.1.1&p_search=searchss&p_L=50&BackReference=&p_plural=yes&p_s_PARA1=&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA1%24LD&expr=PARA1+AND+PARA2&p_s_PARA2=iax&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA2%24COMB&p_op_ALL=AND&a_default=search&a_search=Submit+Query&a_search=Submit+Query
IAX is no longer registerd as a trademark

http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=d4l15a.1.1&p_search=searchss&p_L=50&BackReference=&p_plural=yes&p_s_PARA1=&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA1%24LD&expr=PARA1+AND+PARA2&p_s_PARA2=dundi&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA2%24COMB&p_op_ALL=AND&a_default=search&a_search=Submit+Query&a_search=Submit+Query
dundi shows that there never was a filing

So it would be improper for anyone to use the (R) symbol in relation to
those terms, since they arent registered.  At best they could hope for a
common law trademark (signified by the [tm]) but with iax that is more
problematic given that it was registered by linux support services, and
marked as abandoned.  This may be related to the RFC draft for the
protocol, since I think the abandoned stuff at one time said that it was
due to the actions of the owner making it more generic, but I really
dont recall at this point.

On Mon, 2008-01-14 at 22:54 -0500, Rick wrote:
> thx for the explaination, you are obviously in a better position to
> explain why google words people are rejecting *asterisk adds when they
> were prevously accepted... pleas expound...

>         

-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
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