[asterisk-users] Zaptel project being renamed to DAHDI

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Sun, Jun 01, 2008 at 10:35:44PM -0400, Steve Totaro wrote:
> 5.  "We are not doing _anything_ that will prohibit other hardware
> vendors for making compatible drivers."
> 
>  I am sure that is true but what happens when they use the trademarked
> term DAHDI?  AdWords getting banned, cease and desist letters for
> trademark infringement for being "DAHDI" compatible.  We have seen it
> before with Asterisk as I stated before, it is just a matter of time
> before it gets slipped in more slowly so instead of the whole
> community enraged, a small minority will be affected one at a time.

Absolutely nothing.

No trademark owner has any legal right of any sort to control the
descriptive or editorial use of a trademarked name by other parties,
absent contractual agreement.

*They* have to say Kleenex-brand facial tissues, and so does their ad
agency, but *we* don't, and they can't change it.

They can only go after you for it if you use the mark in an infringing
fashion.

	http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tm.htm
	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_infringement
	http://www.bitlaw.com/trademark/infringe.html

"DAHDI-compatible" is a perfectly serviceable thing for a hardware
manufacturer to call a card or driver.  And if Digium puts that string
into the actual *interface* (IE: you have to use that string to tag
calls to their ABI), then they can't have lawyers yell at you for that
either.

IANAL, but I've played one on the net for 25 years.

Trademark law, happily, is *much* more clear-cut than copyright law.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
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