Copyright and latin descriptions

[Una Smith]

Doug Yanega wrote:

>a *name* may be trademarked, but not copyrighted.

Yes.  A list of names cannot be registered as a trademark, nor can the
content of the list be protected by copyright.  There was a famous
court battle over this issue when telemarketers first started selling
huge lists of names and phone numbers extracted from local phone books.

That's also why you can buy user guides to popular software, published
by third parties, that are basically re-writes of the official manuals,
but the cheap photocopy versions of the official manuals, that I have
seen for sale in (e.g.) street markets in Peru, are *not* legal.

By extrapolation, a checklist of names can probably be copyrighted, so
bound photocopies of the list would not be legal, but anyone could
legally make and sell their own checklist of identical names, based on
that list.


>[For example, "listserv" is a trademarked program name, equivalent to
>"macjordomo", etc., and the people who created it have recently been
>getting bent out of shape about its increasingly colloquial use, which
>seems odd to me - I don't think Xerox, Kleenex, Q-tips, Saran Wrap,
>and other trademarked names entering colloquial usage has been
>perceived as a bad thing by their owners.]

I am sure Xerox objects whenever a competitor's product is advertized
or promoted in any way as a "Xerox machine".  The owners of the ListServ
trademark have always tried to discourage their competitors from cashing
in on their hard-earned and well-deserved good name.  The issue is only
as new as the competition.

        Una Smith