I’m not sure whether going up against Oracle’s lawyers is brave or foolhardy, but I wish them the best of luck. Oracle’s trademark claims are obviously groundless, but on the other hand, they have infinity dollars, so often that means you get to do whatever you want regardless of reality.
Laurence Lessig, founding member of Creative Commons, wrote in Code 2.0 (1999) about four elements that regulate behavior online: Laws, norms, markets, and technology
Code/architecture – the physical or technical constraints on activities (e.g. locks on doors or firewalls on the Internet)
Market – economic forces
Law – explicit mandates that can be enforced by the government
Norms – social conventions that one often feels compelled to follow
One interesting thing to me is that one element can break or otherwise invalidate another. Your example is a good one where market forces dominate the legal/law claims.
I’m still not entirely sure what the issue here is: Oracle bought the trademark (when it bought Sun), but hasn’t used the trademark, hasn’t sued anyone, etc. Not sure if this is the bear I’d go poking …
What does canceling the trademark accomplish, besides allowing any scammer to pretend that they’re the owner of Javascript (etc.)?
I’d much rather have Oracle transfer the trademark to a foundation focused on Javascript (the technology, the standards, and the community).
The issue is that every company on Earth that wants to talk about how they use JavaScript, or support JavaScript, or build a product with JavaScript in the name can be sued out of existence by Oracle since Oracle owns the Trademark. Trademarks have rules — use it or lose it — and Deno is putting a stake in the ground saying “You’re not actually using this Trademark and therefore have no rights to it. JavaScript is a common name that applies outside of any product controlled by you. It’s not valid that you have a hold on it.”
IANAL, but I suspect that this is a slam dunk case for the JavaScript community that’s just never been tested before because no one had the guts to do it. Hopefully that’s true. The JavaScript community has, for 20+ years used alternative names such as JS and EcmaScript to refer to JavaScript because of this. Why they didn’t seek out a truly better name free of trademark drama, I’ll never know, but they didn’t, and they deserve to take back this one.
The issue is that every company on Earth that wants to talk about how they use JavaScript, or support JavaScript, or build a product with JavaScript in the name can be sued out of existence by Oracle since Oracle owns the Trademark.
(IANAL but …) That description matches neither reality nor the law.
It is true you can’t sell a product called “JavaScript”, without creating legal troubles for yourself. It is true you can’t sell a product that is likely to create confusion about whether the product comes from Oracle or not, without creating legal troubles for yourself. But there are legitimate uses of another company’s trademark that are non-infringing.
For the record, I’m not looking to argue. I do not support Oracle retaining a trademark that would be better off in the hands of a foundation. But we all need to be reasonable and rational and honest in the discussion, or it’s pointless to discuss at all.
But there are legitimate uses of another company’s trademark that are non-infringing.
OK. For clarity’s sake, let’s define some?
There’s never been a “JavaScript Conference”, for instance, because of the threat of trademark violation. That’s why it’s called JSConf. Would that actually be non-infringing?
This is the part where “IANAL”. I know that Sun and later Oracle pushed back against some conferences with “Java” in the name, for example, which I find fairly self-defeating. One of my favorite conferences in Antwerrpen Belgium was called Javapolis, for example, and they “had to” change their name.
Companies can choose to license their trademarks in limited ways, e.g. for a conference, but it doesn’t seem that Oracle is willing to do that. I was quite disappointed in the case of Javapolis, for example, but that decision was above my pay grade.
Not sure what you think Oracle is doing against these alleged scammers today. Oracle is just squatting on the mark, not enforcing anything with it. But people avoid using it because they’re rightly terrified of poking the bear.
The page notes that Oracle has sent C&Ds to communities like “Rust for JavaScript” developers and there’s a pretty good chance that there have been legal actions you haven’t heard about.
People seem to think that “I haven’t heard about trademark enforcement” == “it’s not happening”, but a lot of trademark enforcement takes place quietly and consists of Company A sending companies B, C, D, etc. stern letters (or emails) saying “you’re using our mark, stop it”. Then each of those companies have to comb their websites and remove potentially infringing uses. (Source: Have worked for a company that has been on the receiving end and have spent more time than desired helping to scrub usages of terms.)
“I’d much rather have Oracle transfer the trademark to a foundation focused on Javascript”
Yeah. That would be a better outcome. Not sure if that is something Oracle would do, though.
The page notes that Oracle has sent C&Ds to communities like “Rust for JavaScript” developers and there’s a pretty good chance that there have been legal actions you haven’t heard about.
What Oracle sent a notice on that he should rename the company behind the course, not the course or the community. Company names and trademarks are indeed automatically in collision and this will just pop up in general corporate review. It is your job as a company founder to check for collisions. I you use any lawyer worth their salt, they will inform you of that.
I know how frustrating this is to receive mail from corporate legal, but this is really just ey “hey, could you please?”. As a competitor, this is also the reason my company does not have “Rust” in the name, and I think those reasons are entirely fair.
The page notes that Oracle has sent C&Ds to communities like “Rust for JavaScript” developers
That’s shitty, and likely to be non-enforceable as well. (Edit: I just saw skade’s comment that gives an excellent in depth look at what actually happened, so read that one!)
“I’d much rather have Oracle transfer the trademark to a foundation focused on Javascript”
Yeah. That would be a better outcome. Not sure if that is something Oracle would do, though.
It’s definitely possible. I was (in some previous life) a senior exec at Oracle and oversaw the transfer of our “enterprise Java” assets (aka “J2EE”) to the Eclipse Foundation. Unfortunately, as a side-effect of the Google lawsuit going on at the time, the thing that Oracle wasn’t willing to transfer was the trademark (“Java EE”, “J2EE”, etc.) because they didn’t want to lose control of any “Java” trademarks, so we agreed with Eclipse to rename it all to “Jakarta EE” to unblock the process.
Not sure if you saw my edits, where I had added a ref to your comment. Unfortunately, when I first responded to the previous comment, I had not seen your post because I was looking at a view that showed only messages that were responses to me; I only saw your illuminating post when I navigated to read the entire thread.
It’s part of the U.S. law – if you don’t use a trademark, it expires “by default”.
i.e. unlike other properties, inaction affects the legal status of a trademark. You can’t just buy it and hold it forever. You have to use it and do things with it.
The opposite somewhat applies to generic words like “kleenex” or “google” – if people use those words in a certain way, and you don’t defend it, then that affects its legal status
The opposite somewhat applies to generic words like “kleenex” or “google” – if people use those words in a certain way, and you don’t defend it, then that affects its legal status
I’m confused by what you wrote here, so I’m going to clarify what I think you meant. There are lots of trademarks that have become used to mean the common thing — “kleenex” is a substitute for tissue, “coke” for soda, “google” for searching, etc.. But typically, the only trademarks of these kind that get “cancelled” are ones that aren’t made up words to begin with. Like, “Airfryer” is a great example of this. It just describes what it is, and the Phillips corporation (I think?) lost the trademark in most jurisdictions. If they called it “Airmagic Fryer” they’d totally still own it.
JavaScript is probably more closely related to “kleenex” or “google” than “Airfryer” and if it’s forced to be released, I assume it’ll be because Oracle isn’t using it, not because it’s become genericized. That being said, because Oracle has a trademark on “Java,” that it does enforce, one could imagine that they have an easy argument that the JavaScript trademark helps them protect that trademark and they need to keep it. That’s my prediction for what actually happens here, despite believing that JavaScript rightfully belongs to the JavaScript community.
This is muddling three separate bad things that can happen to trademarks:
They can be “weak”, meaning they are too close to just being descriptive of the product, like “air fryer“.
They can become “generic“, meaning they have become “just words”, like aspirin or escalator.
They can cease to be used in commerce, so there’s no “trade” happening.
All of these can be used as a defense against an infringement claim, and are also grounds to petition the PTO to have the trademark invalidated.
“Needing a trademark to protect another trademark” is not a concept in trademark law, so the Java trademark has nothing to do with this.
BTW, careful companies refer to their products as “Kleenex facial tissue” or “Instant Pot automatic cooker”, rather than simply “Kleenex” or “Instant Pot”, precisely to distinguish the trademark from a generic term. Otherwise, it looks like the owner used the term generically themselves, which strengthens the case for genericness.
“Needing a trademark to protect another trademark” is not a concept in trademark law, so the Java trademark has nothing to do with this.
You clearly have more authority here being PTATL (partner to a trademark lawyer), but the closeness of JavaScript and Java, being both names of programming languages, is the reason I (again, IANAL) would think it’d be possible for them to win.
Isn’t it the case that trademarks have very specific bounds? For instance, it’d be possible to have “Kleenex Music Company” because there’s no possible confusion with “Kleenex Paper Products.” My understanding is that this is how Apple Computer Corporation and Apple Music Corporation were able to co-exist (with, of course, historical challenges).
Would it be possible for a new company, say, Coffee Computers, to write a new programming language, call it “JavaBytes Programming Language” and get a trademark on it? That seems completely unlikely to me…
Similarity of marks doesn’t have any particular force on its own. But to successfully claim infringement, one of the tests is whether customers are confused by the marks. You could assert that because everyone knows Java is from Oracle, they would assume JavaScript was from Oracle. But that doesn’t really work, because JavaScript isn’t from Oracle — there is no product to confuse. (See other argument about no use in commerce.)
Also, although the name JavaScript was arguably chosen to cause exactly that confusion (!), I think you could get all the testimony you needed to show that there is no such association in customers’ minds today.
Yes, trademarks have “classes” which are broad categories, and the also have individual product descriptions that have to be examined and approved by the PTO as being specific enough. So in theory your Java Joe coffee shop is in no danger from Oracle, but your JavaBytes programming language might not even get a registration.
Also, although the name JavaScript was arguably chosen to cause exactly that confusion (!), I think you could get all the testimony you needed to show that there is no such association in customers’ minds today.
I think this is incorrect. Within the last 2 years, I’ve had to explain to at least one computing professional that JavaScript has nothing to do with Java. If I had $1 to wager on whether or not at least 50% of the total population of computer programming professionals realized that JavaScript was not in anyway related to Java, except by name, I’d bet the entire $1 in a heartbeat. Not sure how to test this for real, but I’m skeptical that there isn’t confusion here. (if the sample is the Hacker News crowd, I’d lose. Needs to be broader sample)
but your JavaBytes programming language might not even get a registration.
But that’s my point exactly. Oracle would likely be able to successfully sue Coffee Corporation for putting out a product called the JavaBytes Programming Language. If they could successfully make a claim like that in court, why can’t they make a similar claim in regards to keeping the JavaScript trademark?
Of course, maybe the play here is that the court releases the trademark on JavaScript, a new trademark on JavaScript is never granted, and JavaBytes still gets sued out of existence when it pops up. I don’t know.
Within the last 2 years, I’ve had to explain to at least one computing professional that JavaScript has nothing to do with Java.
That is so sad.
There is the nightmare scenario that Oracle’s trademark of JavaScript is invalidated for lack of use, but then they fight anyone else trying to register it by claiming too much similarity to Java. Not sure how that would work. I think you’d have to go back to the lack of confusion defense.
There are (I think) at least two separate tests. Roughly speaking, an attempt to register a trademark can be rejected or challenged based on confusibility with an existing trademark. In more extreme cases it becomes “passing off”.
But confusibility doesn’t mean you can register defensive trademarks. There’s a requirement that you must intend to use a trademark that you register. (I read about it the other day in the SkyKick vs Sky trademark case which is EU/UK law, but the judge referred to WIPO wrt subtle differences between the two, so I think the USA has a similar requirement.) Hence the point in the complaint that Oracle provided fraudulent evidence that they are using the trademark. (They wouldn’t need to provide any evidence if defensive trademarks were a thing.) And the other point that Oracle is not using the trademark, which (after a suitable grace period) is grounds for getting it cancelled.
Presumably the only downside of going up against Oracle are the dollars they commit toward fighting the lawsuit, right? Or does Deno have some legal liability that Oracle could pursue against them? Or is the idea that Oracle would just open repeated frivolous lawsuits against Deno in retaliation?
The same opportunity exists regardless of what Oracle does. The problem is that there isn’t a better name than JavaScript, because that is what everyone has called it for the last quarter century.
I feel like there is a FAR better chance of stopping the use of “SSL” in favor of “TLS.” We’ve had TLS for 25 years and all versions of SSL have been formally deprecated for 10. Other than sheer habit, there is no reason for people to keep saying SSL when they mean TLS, other than in the names of some software and libraries that pre-dated TLS.
And yet, it likely will never happen. When we look at JavaScript, the situation is thornier by an order of magnitude or more. It is a MUCH deeper and entrenched name. As any middle-schooler will attest to, names tend to stick, even when we don’t want them to.
This is kind of beside the point, but I do not understand why the IETF went through a phase of renaming protocols that they adopted, eg, SSL -> TLS, Jabber -> XMPP, BEEP -> BXXP (probably others I forget). At least they seem to have renamed things less in recent years.
I had a quick look at how Oracle presents those products. They seem to be branded “Oracle JET” and “GraalJS” and it seems (based on a casual glance from a non-expert) they Oracle is treating “JavaScript” in a generic manner rather than as their trademark.
[…] JET is merely a set of JavaScript libraries for Oracle services, particularly Oracle Cloud. There are millions of JavaScript libraries; JET is not special. […]
[…] GraalVM is far from a canonical JavaScript implementation[…] GraalVM’s product page doesn’t even mention “JavaScript”; you must dig into the documentation to find its support.
Oracle’s use of JavaScript in GraalVM and JET does not reflect genuine use of the trademark. These weak connections do not satisfy the requirement for consistent, real-world use in trade.
With that considered, I hope they’ve prepared a stronger argument for the judge.
We will present a wealth of evidence proving that Oracle has failed to use the trademark as the law requires.
They will have to show this is true, but given the status, it’s probably prudent that they keep their cards close to the chest. If they go to court, they want to give oracle little time to prepare.
I’m not sure whether going up against Oracle’s lawyers is brave or foolhardy, but I wish them the best of luck. Oracle’s trademark claims are obviously groundless, but on the other hand, they have infinity dollars, so often that means you get to do whatever you want regardless of reality.
Laurence Lessig, founding member of Creative Commons, wrote in Code 2.0 (1999) about four elements that regulate behavior online: Laws, norms, markets, and technology
One interesting thing to me is that one element can break or otherwise invalidate another. Your example is a good one where market forces dominate the legal/law claims.
I’m still not entirely sure what the issue here is: Oracle bought the trademark (when it bought Sun), but hasn’t used the trademark, hasn’t sued anyone, etc. Not sure if this is the bear I’d go poking …
What does canceling the trademark accomplish, besides allowing any scammer to pretend that they’re the owner of Javascript (etc.)?
I’d much rather have Oracle transfer the trademark to a foundation focused on Javascript (the technology, the standards, and the community).
The issue is that every company on Earth that wants to talk about how they use JavaScript, or support JavaScript, or build a product with JavaScript in the name can be sued out of existence by Oracle since Oracle owns the Trademark. Trademarks have rules — use it or lose it — and Deno is putting a stake in the ground saying “You’re not actually using this Trademark and therefore have no rights to it. JavaScript is a common name that applies outside of any product controlled by you. It’s not valid that you have a hold on it.”
IANAL, but I suspect that this is a slam dunk case for the JavaScript community that’s just never been tested before because no one had the guts to do it. Hopefully that’s true. The JavaScript community has, for 20+ years used alternative names such as JS and EcmaScript to refer to JavaScript because of this. Why they didn’t seek out a truly better name free of trademark drama, I’ll never know, but they didn’t, and they deserve to take back this one.
(IANAL but …) That description matches neither reality nor the law.
It is true you can’t sell a product called “JavaScript”, without creating legal troubles for yourself. It is true you can’t sell a product that is likely to create confusion about whether the product comes from Oracle or not, without creating legal troubles for yourself. But there are legitimate uses of another company’s trademark that are non-infringing.
For the record, I’m not looking to argue. I do not support Oracle retaining a trademark that would be better off in the hands of a foundation. But we all need to be reasonable and rational and honest in the discussion, or it’s pointless to discuss at all.
OK. For clarity’s sake, let’s define some?
There’s never been a “JavaScript Conference”, for instance, because of the threat of trademark violation. That’s why it’s called JSConf. Would that actually be non-infringing?
I do know of at least one:
https://javascript-conference.com/munich/
This is the part where “IANAL”. I know that Sun and later Oracle pushed back against some conferences with “Java” in the name, for example, which I find fairly self-defeating. One of my favorite conferences in Antwerrpen Belgium was called Javapolis, for example, and they “had to” change their name.
Companies can choose to license their trademarks in limited ways, e.g. for a conference, but it doesn’t seem that Oracle is willing to do that. I was quite disappointed in the case of Javapolis, for example, but that decision was above my pay grade.
Not sure what you think Oracle is doing against these alleged scammers today. Oracle is just squatting on the mark, not enforcing anything with it. But people avoid using it because they’re rightly terrified of poking the bear.
They tried asking Oracle to release the mark and got no response.
The prospect of never having to say or hear “ECMAScript” is enough for me.
The page notes that Oracle has sent C&Ds to communities like “Rust for JavaScript” developers and there’s a pretty good chance that there have been legal actions you haven’t heard about.
People seem to think that “I haven’t heard about trademark enforcement” == “it’s not happening”, but a lot of trademark enforcement takes place quietly and consists of Company A sending companies B, C, D, etc. stern letters (or emails) saying “you’re using our mark, stop it”. Then each of those companies have to comb their websites and remove potentially infringing uses. (Source: Have worked for a company that has been on the receiving end and have spent more time than desired helping to scrub usages of terms.)
“I’d much rather have Oracle transfer the trademark to a foundation focused on Javascript”
Yeah. That would be a better outcome. Not sure if that is something Oracle would do, though.
Note here though: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/14vnipl/rust_for_javascript_developers_ltd_received_a/
What Oracle sent a notice on that he should rename the company behind the course, not the course or the community. Company names and trademarks are indeed automatically in collision and this will just pop up in general corporate review. It is your job as a company founder to check for collisions. I you use any lawyer worth their salt, they will inform you of that.
Checking the actual screenshot of the notice: this is a relatively friendly note to comply ahead of a complaint. https://vxtwitter.com/chatsidhartha/status/1649487592889413638
I know how frustrating this is to receive mail from corporate legal, but this is really just ey “hey, could you please?”. As a competitor, this is also the reason my company does not have “Rust” in the name, and I think those reasons are entirely fair.
That’s shitty, and likely to be non-enforceable as well. (Edit: I just saw skade’s comment that gives an excellent in depth look at what actually happened, so read that one!)
It’s definitely possible. I was (in some previous life) a senior exec at Oracle and oversaw the transfer of our “enterprise Java” assets (aka “J2EE”) to the Eclipse Foundation. Unfortunately, as a side-effect of the Google lawsuit going on at the time, the thing that Oracle wasn’t willing to transfer was the trademark (“Java EE”, “J2EE”, etc.) because they didn’t want to lose control of any “Java” trademarks, so we agreed with Eclipse to rename it all to “Jakarta EE” to unblock the process.
It didn’t happen. They enforced on a company name, not a community. That is very enforceable. (see my other comment)
I’m a bit confused/amused that i wanted to remind you of a comment above that sets a good example for keeping it accurate, only to see it’s you.
Not sure if you saw my edits, where I had added a ref to your comment. Unfortunately, when I first responded to the previous comment, I had not seen your post because I was looking at a view that showed only messages that were responses to me; I only saw your illuminating post when I navigated to read the entire thread.
Ha, thanks! The “amused” was deliberate, to indicate that I’m pretty sure it was more by accident than anything else :).
It’s part of the U.S. law – if you don’t use a trademark, it expires “by default”.
i.e. unlike other properties, inaction affects the legal status of a trademark. You can’t just buy it and hold it forever. You have to use it and do things with it.
The opposite somewhat applies to generic words like “kleenex” or “google” – if people use those words in a certain way, and you don’t defend it, then that affects its legal status
I’m confused by what you wrote here, so I’m going to clarify what I think you meant. There are lots of trademarks that have become used to mean the common thing — “kleenex” is a substitute for tissue, “coke” for soda, “google” for searching, etc.. But typically, the only trademarks of these kind that get “cancelled” are ones that aren’t made up words to begin with. Like, “Airfryer” is a great example of this. It just describes what it is, and the Phillips corporation (I think?) lost the trademark in most jurisdictions. If they called it “Airmagic Fryer” they’d totally still own it.
JavaScript is probably more closely related to “kleenex” or “google” than “Airfryer” and if it’s forced to be released, I assume it’ll be because Oracle isn’t using it, not because it’s become genericized. That being said, because Oracle has a trademark on “Java,” that it does enforce, one could imagine that they have an easy argument that the JavaScript trademark helps them protect that trademark and they need to keep it. That’s my prediction for what actually happens here, despite believing that JavaScript rightfully belongs to the JavaScript community.
This is muddling three separate bad things that can happen to trademarks:
All of these can be used as a defense against an infringement claim, and are also grounds to petition the PTO to have the trademark invalidated.
“Needing a trademark to protect another trademark” is not a concept in trademark law, so the Java trademark has nothing to do with this.
BTW, careful companies refer to their products as “Kleenex facial tissue” or “Instant Pot automatic cooker”, rather than simply “Kleenex” or “Instant Pot”, precisely to distinguish the trademark from a generic term. Otherwise, it looks like the owner used the term generically themselves, which strengthens the case for genericness.
(Source: my trademark attorney wife)
As I understand it, an important test to determine whether a trademark has become generic is to what degree it indicates a particular source for the goods or services. In order to become generic the principal significance of the word must be its indication of the nature or class of an article, rather than an indication of its origin.
Exactly — the entire purpose of a trademark is to indicate the origin of the product. If it doesn’t do that anymore, it’s invalid.
You clearly have more authority here being PTATL (partner to a trademark lawyer), but the closeness of JavaScript and Java, being both names of programming languages, is the reason I (again, IANAL) would think it’d be possible for them to win.
Isn’t it the case that trademarks have very specific bounds? For instance, it’d be possible to have “Kleenex Music Company” because there’s no possible confusion with “Kleenex Paper Products.” My understanding is that this is how Apple Computer Corporation and Apple Music Corporation were able to co-exist (with, of course, historical challenges).
Would it be possible for a new company, say, Coffee Computers, to write a new programming language, call it “JavaBytes Programming Language” and get a trademark on it? That seems completely unlikely to me…
Similarity of marks doesn’t have any particular force on its own. But to successfully claim infringement, one of the tests is whether customers are confused by the marks. You could assert that because everyone knows Java is from Oracle, they would assume JavaScript was from Oracle. But that doesn’t really work, because JavaScript isn’t from Oracle — there is no product to confuse. (See other argument about no use in commerce.)
Also, although the name JavaScript was arguably chosen to cause exactly that confusion (!), I think you could get all the testimony you needed to show that there is no such association in customers’ minds today.
Yes, trademarks have “classes” which are broad categories, and the also have individual product descriptions that have to be examined and approved by the PTO as being specific enough. So in theory your Java Joe coffee shop is in no danger from Oracle, but your JavaBytes programming language might not even get a registration.
I think this is incorrect. Within the last 2 years, I’ve had to explain to at least one computing professional that JavaScript has nothing to do with Java. If I had $1 to wager on whether or not at least 50% of the total population of computer programming professionals realized that JavaScript was not in anyway related to Java, except by name, I’d bet the entire $1 in a heartbeat. Not sure how to test this for real, but I’m skeptical that there isn’t confusion here. (if the sample is the Hacker News crowd, I’d lose. Needs to be broader sample)
But that’s my point exactly. Oracle would likely be able to successfully sue Coffee Corporation for putting out a product called the JavaBytes Programming Language. If they could successfully make a claim like that in court, why can’t they make a similar claim in regards to keeping the JavaScript trademark?
Of course, maybe the play here is that the court releases the trademark on JavaScript, a new trademark on JavaScript is never granted, and JavaBytes still gets sued out of existence when it pops up. I don’t know.
That is so sad.
There is the nightmare scenario that Oracle’s trademark of JavaScript is invalidated for lack of use, but then they fight anyone else trying to register it by claiming too much similarity to Java. Not sure how that would work. I think you’d have to go back to the lack of confusion defense.
There are (I think) at least two separate tests. Roughly speaking, an attempt to register a trademark can be rejected or challenged based on confusibility with an existing trademark. In more extreme cases it becomes “passing off”.
But confusibility doesn’t mean you can register defensive trademarks. There’s a requirement that you must intend to use a trademark that you register. (I read about it the other day in the SkyKick vs Sky trademark case which is EU/UK law, but the judge referred to WIPO wrt subtle differences between the two, so I think the USA has a similar requirement.) Hence the point in the complaint that Oracle provided fraudulent evidence that they are using the trademark. (They wouldn’t need to provide any evidence if defensive trademarks were a thing.) And the other point that Oracle is not using the trademark, which (after a suitable grace period) is grounds for getting it cancelled.
Problem is, it isn’t a sleeping bear, its an extremely awake and litigious bear.
Even with the Rust for Javascript Developers Ltd. stuff, In the two months between incorporating and receiving first letter, there was very little engagement on Twitter, I think during that period there was also no notable engagement on other platforms either. They very much didn’t seem to come across it by chance, but instead through routine searching for trademark violations (IMO).
A lot of people have a genuine fear of Oracle (‘s legal department), and I don’t think I’d be able to say that fear is unfounded.
Not sure I’d call a company doing routine searches matching company names against their list of trademarks “ extremely awake and litigious”.
In terms of any corporate trademark department, they’d do at least that even in hibernation mode, probably through a service.
Presumably the only downside of going up against Oracle are the dollars they commit toward fighting the lawsuit, right? Or does Deno have some legal liability that Oracle could pursue against them? Or is the idea that Oracle would just open repeated frivolous lawsuits against Deno in retaliation?
If Oracle do defend it and win, it could be an opportunity to move to a better name than JavaScript.
The same opportunity exists regardless of what Oracle does. The problem is that there isn’t a better name than JavaScript, because that is what everyone has called it for the last quarter century.
Of course we already have another name, although I don’t think many would call it better. It is kind of yecky.
At least ECMAScript is a little better than HATEOAS! /shrug
A bit tongue in cheek, but we’ve already got another name: “It’s just Scheme with curly brace syntax” — Douglas Crockford
I feel like there is a FAR better chance of stopping the use of “SSL” in favor of “TLS.” We’ve had TLS for 25 years and all versions of SSL have been formally deprecated for 10. Other than sheer habit, there is no reason for people to keep saying SSL when they mean TLS, other than in the names of some software and libraries that pre-dated TLS.
And yet, it likely will never happen. When we look at JavaScript, the situation is thornier by an order of magnitude or more. It is a MUCH deeper and entrenched name. As any middle-schooler will attest to, names tend to stick, even when we don’t want them to.
This is kind of beside the point, but I do not understand why the IETF went through a phase of renaming protocols that they adopted, eg, SSL -> TLS, Jabber -> XMPP, BEEP -> BXXP (probably others I forget). At least they seem to have renamed things less in recent years.
SSL to TLS was for the sake of MS’s ego, apparently: https://tim.dierks.org/2014/05/security-standards-and-name-changes-in.html?m=1
Jabber to XMPP was a trademark thing if I recall correctly. (EDIT: apparently I did, Cisco owns the trademark but sublicenses it to the foundation: https://xmpp.org/about/xsf/jabber-trademark/background/)
Don’t have any knowledge on BEEP
I honestly thought the case against Oracle’s trademark was stronger than this. Finding out about Oracle JET makes me think it’s pretty defensible.
I had a quick look at how Oracle presents those products. They seem to be branded “Oracle JET” and “GraalJS” and it seems (based on a casual glance from a non-expert) they Oracle is treating “JavaScript” in a generic manner rather than as their trademark.
They do reference JET, alongside Graal, in the open letter:
With that considered, I hope they’ve prepared a stronger argument for the judge.
Also:
They will have to show this is true, but given the status, it’s probably prudent that they keep their cards close to the chest. If they go to court, they want to give oracle little time to prepare.
Everything will have to come out in discovery. Unlike in TV and movies, surprise witnesses aren’t actually a thing in corporate law.
Yes, this is not a filed at all though, just a petition to the USPTO. Why give people more time than you need to?
this is the kind of marketing stunt i can get behind.
Why do you consider this JavaScript and WebAssembly runtime obscure? Or should everyone use V8?
BTW: V8 says on their website:
and Deno uses V8.
According to Web.Archive.org, there is the same text on the V8 website for at least 6 years.
How uncreative of the community. Boring and uninspiring.