Thanks for that info ren what if we used U.S.O with a clear acronym?
Silver Dragon
>From a message by Renato about Copyright and the USO:
> The Rev just let me know that about the USO problem you guys are
facing ... I think I can be helpful. (And I'm happy to help -- good to hear
from you guys!) As some of you might know, I haven't taken the bar exam yet
so I cannot give you legal advice. I have to tell you that up front,
because I am not licensed to practice law. That said, I'll give you some
common sense advice that will probably resolve the issue.
 > 
 > Let's assume that these people have rights to the trademark USO,
which they probably do. Owners of trademarks commonly search the internet
and send out mean letters to anyone who uses their trademark. Fortunately
for the tw community, trademark protection is much different than
copyright, and that works to your advantage. The reason we protect
trademarks is so consumers can distinguish between competing products in
the marketplace. In court, USO would have trouble convincing a judge that
FEN was involved in commerce at all. And as a practical matter, it is
unlikely that USO would spend the money to go to court, given that you
aren't really harming them at all.
 > 
 > There are two possible legal claims that USO could bring against FEN.
They could argue that FEN is infringing on their trademark, which requires
USO to prove that FEN uses the trademark to identify a product in commerce.
The court would likely look at things like whether USO and FEN are
competing for the same consumers, whether their products are related, or
whether USO is ever planning to enter FEN's market. Given that USO is a
small, private computer game that is not sold for a profit or marketed in
any real way, there is virtually no likelihood that consumers would confuse
the two products.
 > 
 > USO might also claim that FEN is diluting its trademark in violation
of the Federal Trademark Dilution Act. Under that Act, an "owner of a
famous mark" is entitled to protection from "another person's
commercial use in commerce of a mark or trade name" that "causes
dilution of the distinctive quality of the mark." 15 U.S.C. §
1125(c)(1). Even assuming that USO was a "famous mark" (which I
doubt), FEN would have strong arguments that it is not "inherently
distinctive," that FEN's use is not "a commercial use in
commerce," and that it is not "likely to cause dilution of the
distinctive quality" of USO's trademark.
 > 
 > I haven't spent hours looking into this issue, and I would need to
see the letter they sent Mac to get a sense of what their allegations are.
But it is unlikely that USO would be able to do much to FEN as a legal
matter. They're just writing the letter to scare you, and if you had an
attorney write them a letter back, they would drop the issue. If it meant a
whole lot to you guys, I could probably get an attorney to do that for you.
Otherwise, I could probably give Mac advice on how to draft one. It might
be easier to just ditch the USO name or change it (to USOT by adding
"tradewars" to the end or something), which is what they're
expecting you to do. Given that it's just the name of a tw tourney, it
might not be worth the headache of dealing with legal junk.
 > 
 > I hope this was helpful.
 > 
 > Renato
 > 
 > P.S. One last piece of advice -- don't ever register a domain name
using the acronym USO, like USO2003.com or whatever. The law on domain
names is more heavily slanted towards the preexisting trademark holder, and
it wouldn't be worth the legal headache.



--- FEddy 1.4.03/modPHX