dhouwn wrote:Ah OK, seems you already get some trademark protection without registration. Didn't know that.
Note, that it's still pretty different from (basic) copyright protection which protects creative works for a limited time.
NS is open-source sw, copyrighted/licensed under GNU "copyleft", as per
the link to GNU on the home page. Anyone can copy, distribute, and/or modify the code, though per the license, they too must license it with at least the same rights. This choice was voluntary on the part of the developer.
However, if you create a vastly different product, you can't call it by the same name, because the reputation of the original could be harmed if the second one proved to be faulty. If you create your own fork of Firefox or Seamonkey, don't you have to call it something else? -- and something not so close to the original that a reasonable person might confuse the two. (N0Script? No.
)
dhouwn wrote:I doubt the word alone would reach the threshold of originality.
I would stand by my previous statement that the word did not exist before Giorgio Maone invented it. That's as original as you can get.
Note that makers of very popular products have often had to defend their trademark name from becoming a generic term, which is a different issue. For example, the brand name Kleenex™ became synonymous in the US with "facial tissue", as in "Hand me a kleenex, please". The company would write letters to those who used it that way in writing, reminding them to capitalize it, being a proper noun (name of a particular brand). However, the trademark was registered in 1924, and with common usage and passage of time, it is acceptable to some dictionaries as a generic term, and AFAIK, the company doesn't fight it much anymore.
Hormel Foods Corporation has specifically stated that they do not object to the use of "spam", in
all lower-case letters, to refer to unsolicited, bulk commercial e-mail, provided that people use only SPAM, in all caps,
to refer to their brand of canned meat.
"Kleenex" and "SPAM" were words invented by their respective producers. (IIUC, "SPAM" was a part-contraction, part-acronym of "shoulder pork and ham").
Did the word "NoScript", especially in camel-case, exist before this product existed? ... In any event, the original point was that the names of the other products were too similar to the original, and might cause confusion, including harming the reputation of the original.