On: Robot Is A Hijacked Word

[jordigh]

Wait, someone (Disney?) is defending a trademark on "droid"? That seems pretty silly. Then again, I do think of Star Wars when I think "droid", so maybe they have a good case for defending that trademark. Still, it seems to be close enough to being generic that we should fight it.

[robotresearcher → jordigh]

Can you find popular use before Star Wars? If not, it's not silly. They've been actively protecting 'droid' for 40 years.

[huxley → robotresearcher]

Apparently it first appeared on July 1952 in a story called "Robots of the World! Arise!" by Mari Wolf published in "If" magazine.

[0xcde4c3db → jordigh]

Yep. I'm pretty sure Motorola licensed it for the phone family of the same name. A huge number of pages advertising or even mentioning the Motorola Droid family have "DROID is a trademark of Lucasfilm, Ltd." somewhere in the fine print.

[chrismcb → jordigh]

That is how trademarks works. Lots of simple words are trademarked...Apple, Windows, word,

[jordigh → chrismcb]

But you can't trademark generic words in specific domains. You can't use the "Apple" trademark to sell produce or the "Windows" trademark to sell frames and glass panes. The Lindows lawsuit very nearly saw Microsoft lose the Windows trademark because "windows" is a generic term very closely associated to what the Windows OS is.

I can see a case for "droid" referring to generic electromechanical automatons, which are now more of a reality than they were 40 years ago.