OSDev.org

JAAman,
The other side is that a company may not monopolize basic building blocks of a language. So single letters and letter words (abbreviations) are less protected by trade mark laws because similarities arise earlier.

JAAman wrote:one thing about trademarks... it includes anything similar

basically, if you are using a name or symbol which may look familiar to someone acquainted with another company/product in the same market, then it is a violation of trademark

you cant trademark a single letter or a number... but any name or symbol you use, is automatically trademarked, and anything similar to it, is a violation of that trademark -- it doesnt have to be exactly the same, only similar, and used in the same territory, and in the same/similar market

Trademarks are not automatically protected. You must register a trademark (for a fee) in order for protection to occur. However, in some cases, an "unregistered trademark" can carry legal weight; in general, this only applies to well pre-established names.

The general basic requirement of a trademark is that it be distinctive and non-trivial. The iPrefix fails both tests.

giszo wrote: Special thanks to Attila Magyar and Kasper Mikkelsen for their contributions in this release.

I'm the one who says thanks, for the pleasure to work on the OS and learning from you
You can expect me to return soon. (I'll be back! lol)

Owen wrote:Trademarks are not automatically protected. You must register a trademark (for a fee) in order for protection to occur. However, in some cases, an "unregistered trademark" can carry legal weight; in general, this only applies to well pre-established names.

This is false. (In the USA, this may apply differently in the UK.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unregistered_trademark

In the United States, registration, both federal or state, is not required to obtain rights in a trademark. An unregistered mark may still receive common law trademark rights.

[quote=Owen]However, in some cases, an "unregistered trademark" can carry legal weight; in general, this only applies to well pre-established names.[/quote]

Just claiming or using an unregistered trademark does not automatically convey trademark rights - the use must be established. In general, the protection afforded is proportional to how well known the mark is. Trademark protection is unlikely to be afforded against someone who could not reasonably know of its existence. An additional point is that one must actively claim a trademark - rather than it being granted automatically as copyright is

Creature wrote:On-topic: Did you create all the icons and graphics yourself? They look really nice.

I can answer for him : at least part of them come from the Tango project (also known as "Ye olde default gnome icons")

Sorry, I didn't notice the question in the big iView name discussion.

The icons are coming from the Tango project as Neolander stated, other parts of the GUI design are partly coming from a fluxbox theme and from my mind.