"Beowulf" trademarked ???

[Greg Lindahl]

> There is considerable precident established in trademark rulings about
> so-called generic marks, ie marks that are sufficiently long established
> and in wide-use by a number of individuals cannot be "aquired" by one
> individual.

Right. But that would be a good topic for a legal mailing list, not
this one.

> The legendary exploits of a 6th century danish hero composed orally in the
> 700's and commiteed to paper in about AD 1000 (Cotton Vitellius A XV) and
> reprinted continously since 1815 should be immune to misguided attempts to
> trademark it.

This is a bad example, and I wouldn't call Don Becker "misguided"; he
invented the concept that bears the name, and, just like Extreme
Linux, the only object of the trademark is to prevent it from being
hijacked.

Sheesh.

[ And no, the fact that Beowulf was used as a literary term does not
mean anything about trademarking "Beowulf" as a sub-type of computer
cluster. ]

-- g