
Oracle owns “JavaScript”, so Apple is taking down my app - petercooper
https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/8d0bg2/oracle_owns_javascript_so_apple_is_taking_down_my/
======
binarynate
I knew that Microsoft had to call their ECMAScript implementation JScript, but
it never dawned on me that Oracle is the current owner of the "JavaScript"
trademark:

[http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=2416017&caseSearchType=US_...](http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=2416017&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch)

Between this and Oracle's ongoing lawsuit against Google for their use of Java
in Android, I have a pretty low opinion of Oracle.

~~~
giancarlostoro
If I had to explain Oracle to anyone I would only say that their motto is
simply "Do all evil."

~~~
blasdel
It's more accurately "take money" — don't anthropomorphize them:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246)

~~~
giancarlostoro
Heh and adding on to that... "the love of money is a root of all kinds of
evil"

------
Wehrdo
I'm surprised that "JavaScript" has not become a generic trademark [0].
Examples from the Wikipedia article include Thermos, Chapstick, and Dumpster.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark)

~~~
cryptonector
A test case might be needed. If Oracle were to sue a deep-pocketed competitor
over the trademark, then we might find a court reaching the conclusion that
the trademark has been diluted and the name is now generic. But if Oracle does
no such thing, and sues only shallow-pocketed "nobodies", then the legal
status of the mark will remain unclear.

My guess is Oracle would only do the latter, and that they're doing it because
some lawyer thinks that Oracle has to do this to demonstrate that it is
defending the mark even though that's nonsense if they don't go after notable
unlicensed uses of their mark.

Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to a corporate lawyer.

~~~
cobbzilla
I love your riff on Hanlon's Razor:

"Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to a corporate lawyer."

Shall we call it Cryptonector's Razor? You invented it, you name it :)

edit: someone else (not me) should name the principle that explains why so few
people on HN have any sense of humor whatsoever.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _edit: someone else (not me) should name the principle that explains why so
> few people on HN have any sense of humor whatsoever._

I think lots of people have sense of humor, but it's accepted here in very
limited amount (and preferably when it's clever humor). I'd attribute this to
HN being one of the few remaining places on the Internet where you can discuss
serious/interesting stuff without immediately drowning in effort-free jokes
and memes - and people want to _keep it that way_. Hence, the word I'd be
looking for might be "oversensitivity".

~~~
cobbzilla
I agree with everything you said, but c'mon, down-voting nerd-humor is just
wrong. If you don't "get" the joke, just move on; only down-vote if the humor
is inappropriate. In this case, I thought my nerd-humor was welcome, and in
the worst case, someone who didn't know about Hanlon's Razor would be educated
and maybe have a laugh. It's not like this was toilet humor. Have a heart, HN
:)

------
brlewis
Is anyone else bothered by the likelihood that the writer of this sentence
doesn't believe it's true?

 _The unauthorized display of our client 's intellectual property is likely to
cause consumers encountering this app to mistakenly believe that it emanates
from, or is provided under a license from, Oracle. _

~~~
IAmEveryone
Let's not go overboard with the criticism. It's a standard phrase expressing a
_probability_ , because it's impossible to predict with absolute certainty.

(I have my doubts regarding that probability, but that's a different matter)

~~~
brlewis
Yes, "likely" is expressing a probability. Substitute "unlikely" into their
sentence and it would still be expressing a probability, except it would be a
believable one.

I stand by my original comment. There's nothing overboard about it, and
nothing demanding absolute certainty.

------
piinbinary
Should we actually start calling it "Yavascript"?

ref: [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-
death...](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-
javascript)

~~~
voxadam
Another comment pointed out that Netscape originally planned to call it
LiceScript but was encouraged by Sun to change it JavaScript so I say if we're
going to change the name we go with the original one. Either that or argue
that the original holder of the Java trademark essentially blessed the use of
its mark and continue calling it JavaScript.

~~~
vatueil
> _LiceScript_

Ahem, "LiveScript":
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript#History](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript#History)

~~~
dotancohen
Fitting. The direction the JavaScript community has been going in for the past
half decade has left me scratching my head often.

------
Someone1234
It is unfortunate that "ECMAScript" is simply a terrible name. I understand
why the term is used, but that doesn't make it inherently good, easy to say,
or memorable.

Fortunately the ES shorthand is more workable (e.g. ES6, ES2017, etc).

~~~
gnulinux
I can't see what's wrong with ECMAScript. ['ek.ma] script. Javascript is just
as long.

~~~
mschuetz
ECMAScript sounds like a disease and it's unpleasant to pronounce.

------
smitherfield
Nobody tell Oracle!
[https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/search?q=JavaScript](https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/search?q=JavaScript)

------
ryanmarsh
Fuck it, let's just call it ECMAScript and be done with it. JavaScript was a
purposefully horrible name to begin with (as other commenters have pointed
out). One less thing Oracle can jerk us around on.

I'm just going to call it ES or ECMAScript from now on. If enough people do it
the matter will be settled.

~~~
yoz-y
Havent dug into this but can you actually? Will browsers accept
type="ecmascript" and will editors accept .es extension without much fuss?

------
alanh
It makes my head hurt a little bit to think that everything after the slash in
the Mime type of open web standard "text/javascript" is a trademark Oracle is
actually trying to enforce

------
sebazzz
I wonder what would happen if he actually asked Oracle permission to use the
name. Would Oracle allow it? Would he be required to pay a fee?

~~~
consp
> Would Oracle allow it?

Yes, but only after:

> Would he be required to pay a fee?

Yes, it's Oracle. It will be a hefty one.

------
luord
Wow, Oracle is now even more evil than they were just yesterday.

~~~
foobarbazetc
Another day ending in “y”... :)

------
gowld
[deleted. Netscape licensed "Java" name from Sun.]

~~~
nl
Except that Oracle owns both the JavaScript and Java trademarks via the Sun
acquisition.

And Sun _requested_ the name change:

 _in early December, Netscape and Sun did a license agreement and it became
JavaScript. And the idea was to make it a complementary scripting language to
go with Java, with the compiled language._ [1]

So it's kind of the opposite of chickens coming home to roost. More like a
term plan finally paying off.

[1] [https://www.infoworld.com/article/2653798/application-
develo...](https://www.infoworld.com/article/2653798/application-
development/javascript-creator-ponders-past--future.html)

------
kbumsik
What is the name of the app? It is unclear if the OP uses "JavaScript" in the
title of the app, or just "JavaScript" appears in the description or the
content of the app. I guess they are quite different cases.

~~~
imacpro1
App author here, the name is: "HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, HTML, Snippet Editor".

The app was written long time ago and I'm surprised to receive an email from
Apple about it at all.

Here is the link so you can see how it's shown in the App Store, I don't think
anyone would associate this app with Oracle!

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/html5-css-javascript-html-
sn...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/html5-css-javascript-html-snippet-
editor/id448999049?ls=1&mt=8)

~~~
pronoiac
It's in the (unwieldy) name? Have you considered changing the name to, say,
Snippet Editor?

~~~
imacpro1
This was done long time ago when we game the appstore ranking by adding all
the keywords to the app name. I haven't touched the app since like many years.

~~~
BreakItDown
Maybe stop trying to game the system? If your product is worth anything,
people will buy it without the need for tricky bullshit.

------
tooltalk
I guess it depends on what your app "Javascript" does.

The key idea in trademark disputes/claims is that you are probably ok as long
as your mark isn't confusingly similar to a widely known valid mark by another
entity/owner. So if your Javascript app has nothing whatsoever to do with the
programming language or computer in general, Apple shouldn't take down your
app.

Eons ago Apple Computer was sued by Apple Corp (Beatle's record label) for
trademark infringement. I wouldn't be too surprised if the Steve's
deliberately named their computer company after the Beattles's corporate
creature, being that Jobs was an ardent Beatles fan. They settled and agreed
not to enter each other's business (ie, music and computer), so as not to
confuse consumers. Apple is a bit hypocritical in this regard though -- in one
trademark lawsuit, the company sued a mom-and-pop grocer in Poland whose
website, A.pl, Apple claimed, violated Apple's trademark, not too long ago and
was criticized for their insanely absurd legal tactics.

~~~
userbinator
From the head of the linked Reddit discussion:

 _Just received this email from Apple about my app(Html, css, javascript
snippet editor)._

In other words, it appears to be an app that's an IDE for various syntaxes,
and JavaScript is one of them. IMHO (not a lawyer, but just observation)
simply mentioning a trademark in reference to your product having something to
do with it is completely legit. Otherwise we'd be seeing companies like Apple
go after all the smartphone case manufacturers that mention "iPhone" since
that's what their product is for.

~~~
dotancohen
> Otherwise we'd be seeing companies like Apple go after all the smartphone
> case manufacturers that mention "iPhone" since that's what their product is
> for.

Apple does that. They have a "Made For i" accessory program, and go after
third-party accessory distributors (not manufacturers) who use their
trademarks without permission:
[https://developer.apple.com/programs/mfi/](https://developer.apple.com/programs/mfi/)

------
jarsin
Finally, the ultimate reason to kill off JavaScript once and for all!

~~~
_sdegutis
Meh, I learned modern JavaScript and dove deep into how JS works over the last
year and I think it’s probably one of my favorite dynamic languages if not my
most favorite one. The syntax is a nice sweet spot, the semantics make more
sense in most situations than Ruby or Python, the lacking standard library has
been more than made up for by third part packages. I’d love to work in JS in
the future which isn’t something I’d have said 10 years ago and especially not
20 years ago.

~~~
xkcd-sucks
Try maintaining and extending a codebase founded on all those third party
packages, over a period of several years

~~~
always_good
Dunno, small stdlib-like extensions are the absolute most trivial 3rd party
dependencies. Like let's say they use Lodash.

Definitely not the hard part of maintaining a legacy dynamically-typed
application. And I'd say it's the most trivial part.

And your assertion suggests that it's somehow rare to have to maintain code?
I'm sure the person you replied to has maintained code for more than a year
and is drawing part of their post from that experience.

------
8bitsrule
Because "Ecmascript" sounds like a job for the Ghostbusters.

~~~
GenericsMotors
Or perhaps a skin rash.

------
hajile
ES seems like a decent enough alternative to me.

------
animex
Is this Apple just doing pre-emptive due-diligence or did Oracle actually
raise a flag?

------
tedeh
IANAL, but why does he not just change the name to "JS" and be done with it?

Edit: looks like he was suggested this in the Reddit thread and thought it was
a good idea.

------
z3t4
This was probably an automated script and just a precaution from Apple. I
think it's safe to use the name JavaScript. For me JavaScript is ES5, eg
before 2015 and EcmaScript is the new JavaScript from ES6 2015 and onwards.

------
dingo_bat
We can still call it ES6 right?

------
Izkata
Given the formatting, I can't help but wonder if the trademark is for
"JAVASCRIPT" and _not_ "JavaScript"/"Javascript"/"javascript"...

~~~
colejohnson66
Trademarks are case insensitive

------
AngeloAnolin
Reading this article makes me want to speed up on a project where I am
migrating an application away from Oracle DB and Forms.

------
jacquesm
Oracle is just acting as expected. Nice of Apple to stand up for their
developers.

------
farnsworthy
It needs a new name (that isn't "ECMAScript").

------
hyperpallium
Boycot "Javascript"!

~~~
Piskvorrr
Sure: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/noscript/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/noscript/) (Just don't go poking around the addon internals,
might be written in The-Language-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named)

