E.piphany

2012年8月20日

通过转入主教()周一,2012年8月20日晚10点分享Tumblr商法是一个棘手的问题,特别是当它涉及到版权和商标。当时的创始人之一史蒂夫•空白E。piphany,最近发布的时候微软威胁要起诉他的公司在他们使用的字母“E”的标志。你看,微软已经发布了ie 3的质量与一个新的标志:字母“E”。不幸的是,E。piphany做出相同的决定用自己的商标。提示合法的姿态。为了保持一个商标,必须试图保护它。这就是导致这类动作。微软的律师们基本上需要威胁和泡芙,否则他们可能最终失去他们的商标。 Even so, the whole dance is often considered absurd, but necessary. So, it comes as no surprise that Microsoft would push a memo down the throats of E.piphany in 1997 over the logo and demand they change it. Blank wasn’t exactly pleased with this action, and has shared what Doug Camplejohn, the VP of Marketing for E.piphany at the time, claims was his response to Microsoft’s salvo. Due to the nature of the piece, we’ve provided it in full below: Dear Bill, We are in receipt of your lawyer’s letter claiming Microsoft’s ownership of the look and feel of the letter “e”. While I understand Microsoft’s proprietary interest in protecting its software, I did not realize (until the receipt of your ominous legal missive) that one of the 26 letters in the English language was now the trademarked property of Microsoft. Given the name of your company, claiming the letter “e” is an unusual place to start. I can understand Microsoft wanting exclusive rights to the letter “M” or “W”, but “e”? I can even imagine a close family member starting your alphabet collection by buying you the letters “B” or “G” as a birthday present. Even the letters “F” “T” or “C” must be more appealing right now then starting with “e”. In fact, considering Microsoft’s financial health and legal prowess you may want to consider buying a symbol rather than a letter. Imagine the value of charging royalties on the use of the dollar “$” sign. I understand the legal complaint refers to the similarities of our use of “e” in the Epiphany corporate logo to the “e” in the Internet Explorer logo. Given that the name of my company and the name of your product both start with the same letter, it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out why we both used the letter in our logos, but I guess it has escaped your lawyers. As to confusion between the two products, it is hard for me to understand why someone would confuse a $250,000 enterprise software package (with which we require a customer to buy $50,000 of Microsoft software; NT, SQL Server and IIS), with the free and ever present Internet Explorer. Given that Microsoft sets the standard for most things in the computer industry, I hope we don’t open the mail next week and find Netscape suing us for using the letter “N”, quickly followed by Sun’s claim on “J”. Perhaps we can submit all 26 letters to some sort of standards committee for arbitration. Come to think of it, starting with “e” is another brilliant Microsoft strategy. It is the most common letter in the English language. Steve Blank Blank supposedly never sent the email, though we kind of wish he had, and Microsoft went on to become a major customer of E.piphany’s. One wonders what the response would have been had he sent the snarky reply. Anger leads to hate, and all that.