
Node.js has a trademark now - NSMeta
http://blog.nodejs.org/2011/04/29/trademark/
======
dchest
From Trademark Policy:

 _Examples of things which are not nominative fair use and not permitted
without a license:

• Use of a trademark in a domain name (e.g., nodeconsultingservices.com)_

They trademarked "Node.js", but claim that having "node" in your domain
requires a license?

Edit: BTW, I have registered this domain.

~~~
sh1mmer
DISCLAIMER: I work for Joyent, and I can speak for the company but this is not
legal advice.

My personal understanding of trademark law is that it is within a given
domain. If you use "Node" in place of "Node.js" but are clearly talking about
"Node.js" then you might be infringing on the trademark.

However, it is not our intention to stop anyone from doing open source or
business using Node. We'd love to give you a free license to use the mark,
please email "trademark [at] joyent [dot] com".

Our intention here is to make sure there are some protections against bad
sports. People doing good legitimate work with Node is awesome and we want to
encourage that. Mostly we need to do this thing with lawyer so if some
hypothetical organisation in the future tried to do something bad and call it
Node.js we can stop them. We don't want people to misrepresent a product as
Node.js when it isn't, and damage the good name of the Node community.

trademark [at] joyent [dot] com is the best place for questions but you are
welcome to reach out to me directly too. I'm tom [at] joyent [dot] com or
@sh1mmer on Twitter.

~~~
dchest
Thanks for your response. I have no doubts that Joyent have good intentions.
I'm not a member of Node.js community, so don't take this as me personally (or
my company) having an issue with Joyent trademarking the name.

I understand that creating a company with the name "Node Consulting, Inc."
that provides Node.js consulting services may create confusion. But why forbid
the use of term in the domain name without agreement? For example, Python's
trademark policy (<http://www.python.org/psf/trademarks/>) says that you can't
name your company "The Python Company", but they have nothing here about
domains.

I have read <http://ilt.eff.org/index.php/Trademark:_Domain_Names> and the
situation about trademarks and domain names is not clear...

Also, why didn't Joyent register "Node" trademark as well?

~~~
carson
To your last question, they did:
[http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=8...](http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=85262599)

~~~
dchest
Thanks. Now it's more clear.

~~~
bliss
I honestly thought that real normal english words could not be trademarked
(scottish law). I think I'll trademark the word Hacker if no-one else has...
You'll all owe me a fortune!

------
va_coder
Trademarks are interesting.

I don't know if this is an apples to apples comparison, but I remember 5 years
back there was a big issue with JBoss and trademarks. One guy trademarked the
name and made a boatload of money when his group sold the rights to Redhat.
And I believe many of the open source developers that contributed were not
allowed to use the name for commercial purposes.

[http://thejbossissue.blogspot.com/2005/10/free-open-
source-s...](http://thejbossissue.blogspot.com/2005/10/free-open-source-
software-foss-and.html)

Does anyone know if there is some kind of 'open source trademark' to prevent a
Marc Fleury/JBoss incident?

~~~
sh1mmer
Disclaimer: I work at Joyent, not legal advice, yada yada

We don't want to be that guy, but we have to enforce the trademark now (in
order to keep it), to allow us to use it stop any abuse to the community that
might happen in the future.

~~~
Natsu
Ask your lawyer for advice on whether this is a good idea or not, but I have
heard of people protecting their trademark by sending out "Permit and Proceed"
letters when they identified people using their mark in a non-harmful way that
would otherwise require trademark defense.

Looks like I heard that from an old Slashdot story about Linden Labs:
[http://slashdot.org/story/07/01/31/0216258/Linden-Labs-
Sends...](http://slashdot.org/story/07/01/31/0216258/Linden-Labs-Sends-Permit-
and-Proceed-Letter)

------
ifesdjeen
noone cares that Ruby on Rails is a registered trademark of DHH, see '"Rails",
"Ruby on Rails", and the Rails logo are registered trademarks of David
Heinemeier Hansson. All rights reserved.' on the bottom of rails website.

They want to use that name, and they won't sue people for making consultancy
business based on that technology for certain, since that's the way
development of platform goes.

------
bane
Be aware, anybody who is thinking of securing a Trademark for their
product/business etc. A Trademark is not like copyright, you _must_ enforce it
as soon as you find out about a violation or lose it. That explains why many
companies get tangled up in lawsuits that might otherwise not be in their best
interest (shutting down fan projects, suing partners or non-related companies,
etc.).

In otherwords, you better have a legal account set aside and stuffed full of
money.

------
gojomo
This sentence from the post doesn't quite mean what was intended:

 _We decided to introduce trademarks on the “Node.js” and the “Node logo” in
order to ensure that people or organisations who are not investing in the Node
community misrepresent, or create confusion about the role of themselves or
their products with Node._

(Throwing in another negative – "...to ensure that people or organizations who
are not investing... _can't_ misrepresent.." – would be a quick fix at the
cost of introducing a double-negative. But I'd suggest a more radical
simplification: "...in order to prevent anyone from misrepresenting their role
with Node.")

------
chapel
This is probably the best way they could have handled it. It protects the name
from abuse while still allowing enough freedom for those wanting to use it
legitimately.

They don't call Ryan Dahl a BDFL for nothing.

~~~
va_coder
What kind of abuse?

~~~
chapel
Someone registering the trademark underneath them, using the trademark for
illegal activities, pretty much anything negative.

Some people seem to be alarmed and think that you won't be able to use
node/node.js in your domain names, but you just need to get a license. Like
with anything else.

~~~
va_coder
Cool. So if/when Oracle buys Joyent they won't use the trademark for nefarious
purposes?

Why not transfer it to Apache? Have people abused Apache server? Apache
Lucene? Apache CouchDB?

We heard the same thing from Sun about Java. It's a slippery slope.

Anyone who puts a lot of time or effort into Node at this point and later gets
burned has no one to blame but themselves.

~~~
Kudose
"Anyone who puts a lot of time or effort into Node at this point and later
gets burned has no one to blame but themselves."

Exactly. I was getting into it, but I am going to ditch it until this is all
sorted out.

~~~
randylahey
Doesn't that seem reactionary and knee jerk? Do you not use countless other
products because their names have been trademarked by an organization?

~~~
Kudose
Um ... yeah. Anything that Microsoft touches.

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nodesocket
We have emailed Joyent in regards to this new 'policy'. Also, the fellas at
NodeJitsu are in the same boat.

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smoody
I didn't realize that it is possible to trademark something after it has been
used widely as a non-trademarked term. Isn't that why Aspirin couldn't be
trademarked?

~~~
kristofferR
"used widely" is very relative.

~~~
bliss
the word "node" has been used widely for years, they seem to be claiming
rights to that word - the joyent rep above says that they are not claiming
rights to the word node, but the text of the claim I just read states just
that. don't get me wrong, i'm not a competitor or anyting - node.js is a cool
tech that I'm currently playing with (would likely not have clicked the link
otherwise), but the MASSIVE distinction between node.js and the simple word
node is cause for concern for me

~~~
Kudose
Exactly ... they CANNOT trademark the word Node. This word has been in the
dictionary since the 16th century derived from the Latin word nōdus, meaning
knot.

