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Apple Forces Aqua Themes Off themes.org
Posted by
Hemos
on Thu Feb 17, 2000 07:59 AM
from the using-the-law dept.
from the using-the-law dept.
Teferi writes "I was browsing t.o and just noticed this - Apple has apparently sent a Cease and Desist letter to themes.org stating that several of the OSX-look themes up othere are copyright violations, because they use the Apple logo in one or two small places (like this theme). " I've actually exchanged mail with OctobrX on this one, and read the C&D letter. Apple's stating violation based on using of copyrighted materials - the Mac OS and Apple logos in this case. Hopefully, now that Apple is talking with the creator of the themes, things can be resolved amicably, and the themes restored - but for the meantime, the themes have been pulled.
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Apple Forces Aqua Themes Off themes.org
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Themes in general (Score:3)
Trademarks (Score:5)
--
Well ... (Score:4)
Re:How reasonable is Apple? (Score:5)
A.) If you remember a few weeks ago, Linus Torvalds had to do a similiar thing with people that were using the Linux logo and violating the Linux copyright. Most people were able to understand how Linus could be so worried about the Linux name, but when Apple does the same thing, many people on Slashdot are getting upset. Apple has to defend their copyrights or they risk having a more major copyright infringement go unpunished because they wouldn't punish the smaller ones.
B.) Honestly, if you designed an operating system and someone else designed an OS (over even a theme) that LOOKED like yours, down to the logos - wouldn't you be a little upset too?
I hope that Apple will be understanding and allow Themes.org to repost the themes with the Apple logo's removed. But I have to agree with what they are doing.
kwsNI
Re:How reasonable is Apple? (Score:4)
Perhaps a pineapple (Score:3)
Or a bananna instead of the apple? There's enough fruit for everyone.
missing at leat one... (Score:4)
Consumer Confusion (Score:5)
From a lawyer.. (Score:5)
THANK YOU!!! I'm glad there's sanity somewhere... (Score:4)
Since the Apple logo is a trademark...
Apple MUST agressively protect it, or they will LOSE the rights to said trademark. The same applies to ANY trademark.
Did't Linus have to shutdown an auction of *linux*.* domain names not too long ago? Well that's the same thing. The holder of a trademark, be it Apple or Linux or Sun or whoever, can NOT ignore ANY transgression. If they DO, they lose the rights to that mark.
Yeah, I know that's bass ackwards. Buy that's out wonderful intellectual property laws. Oppressively strict protection in some places, ridiculously loose in others. Seems that they are written only to provide income for lawyers, not protect the intrest of consumers OR producers.... (sigh).
john
Apple (TM) (Score:3)
So what's the problem? If there were any evidence that Apple had been vicious or overbearing about (Remove these themes This Instant or we'll break you and your site) I would understand people being upset. But from what little evidence is available this sounds as if it was a polite reminder that Apple has to protect those trademarks or lose them, and those themes are in violation. If someone knows otherwise, say so.
Pug
Whether they're called Faith, Axioms, or Assumptions,
The did... (Score:3)
Twice.
Once when they were first formed. McCartney and his merry little band of legal jackals attacked Apple when it was still Jobs and Woz working out of their garage, introducing Apple Computer to the wonderful world of litigation.
They tried to get Apple to change it's name to various other fruits, like Orange and Banana. Sonn enough tho, Jobs and co. hired competent legal council and found out that the beatles had no legal leg to stand on, so long as Apple was in the computer business, not the music business.
Not content with peaceful coexistence, misters "we're better than Jeasus" kept an eye on Apple from afar, waiting until they were a big company with lots of money they could extort, rather than two kids in a garage.
The beatles sued again when Apple released a Macintosh that had the POTENTIAL to used with MIDI. This was settled out of court for one of those infamous "undisclosed sums".
Incidently, that lawsuit was the origin of the "sosumi" beep in the Mac sound control panel. It was originally to be called "xylophone" (spelling?)... but Apple's legal dept thought that having a mucical insturment named in the OS woulod hurt Apple's case against mccartney and his minions. So the engineers renamed the beep "sosumi". They spelled it out over the phone to the approving lawyer, telling him it was a Jappanese word for "peace and harmony" or sone such. The legal dept agreed, and thus a beep was born.
Both cases (and the development of the "Sosumu" beep) can be read about in more detail in Owen Linzmeyers: "The Mac Bathroom Reader" or the sequel by the same author *title of the sequel escapes me tho).
john
Re:How reasonable is Apple? (Score:3)
Absolutely not! I would do exactly what Apple did, but I'd never be upset about it.
US trademark law requires that Apple do this in order to defend their trademark and copyright interests. If they don't Microsoft could then use the Apple logo and successfully argue that Apple is being selective about who it goes after, and Apple might lose the trademark.
On the other hand, if I had designed the Mac look and feel, I would be thrilled that it was so instantly adopted by so much of my competition! The rapid adoption of the Aqua look and feel means that Apple did good user-interface wise. I use Aqua under Sawmill and Gtk+ (actually AquaX under Sawmill) and I think it's one of the best innovations in desktop look-and-feel so far. First off, why did it take this long for people to think of color-coding window baubles? It certainly improves the ease-of-use for me. Also, horizontal pin-striping struck me as a bad idea at first, but somehow it adds something to my desktop. It almost seems as if the applications are more "crafted".
Apple did a great job here, and they know that every innovation will be coppied by the rest of the market. In a way, I'm sure this is why they went for such a radical look. They want everyone to say "oh yeah, that's the new Mac look". Microsoft would call this "mindshare".
It's not a copyright, it's a trademark! (Score:3)
This is one of my pet peeves, right up there with misspelling "lose" as "loose". Copyrights are, as the name implies, the right to copy something. Trademarks are logos and words which are used by companies to identify and distinguish themselves.
Trademark law has one important difference from copyright law, and that's the "enforce it or lose it" clause. If Apple didn't go after these and other unauthorized uses of its trademarks, it could end up losing the rights to them. It's much worse with words, and Xerox has a never-ending battle to avoid having their company name become a generic word.
If copyright law was like this, it would either be complete anarchy (it's too easy to copy something in private) or a complete police state (to hunt down every instance of illegally copied material).
This wasn't "Look and feel !" (Score:3)
Personally, I do find it to be in extremely poor taste that these theme makers are ripping off a GUI that hasn't even been released yet. Sure, it's not illegal, but it's only fair to let the company that came up with that GUI be the first to release it to the world. If you still want it on your machine, then release the theme after that. But Apple did the work on the GUI; I don't see what's so unfair about them wanting to release it first. They can't do anything about it now, I know, but I don't see why the themers couldn't have just left well enough alone and waited till after OSX's release (or at least until after OSX DP3's release) to turn their themes loose.
Skinz with a Z (Score:3)
Or a Lemon? (Score:3)
Still, I think Apple would have done better contacting the authors of the themes directly, and asking politely instead of ordering. If done properly, it might have actually built them good will ("hey, Apple was really cool about it"), instead of reminding everyone of their propensity to sue.
Jon
Re:Why the heck would you want a MacOS theme? (Score:3)
I usually don't take the time to reply to posts on /., however yours is so blatantly inaccurect that I can't stop myself from replying:
MacOS's interface largely uses that ugly 'Chicago' font (an insult to Chicago). I presume (or hope) that you can change this, but how many of MacOS's tech-savvy users (if there are any? ::grin::) are going to do this?
- It's been changed to charcoal since MacOS 8.5 which came out more then a year ago...
- As to whether or not it's a good thing that you be limited in your choice of font for the U.I., well isn't that a question of standardization? I mean, I know people that use large fonts of unknown origin on windows (fonts which I personnaly find very ugly). Sure, Windows will let them make that choice; however it won't properly resize the dialog boxes afterwards... Doesn't it make more sense to limit the user's choice to fonts for which you can guarantee uniformity of the U.I.?
When a message box comes with up with Yes and No buttons, you can't just press Y or N. You have to click.
-Nope, you can most usually click Command-y and Command-n or Esc for cancel. It's been there for a while. Of course if the program makes its own dialog box, the OS can't really do much.
You can't just enter to select a button on a message box which has the focus. Again, you have to click.
-With almost no exception, all dialog boxes always have one button in evidence (represented by a different larger button contour). Pressing the Enter key is the equivalent of activating that button. This has been in the system at least since the Mac Plus era...
You can't move between the buttons a message box with the arrow keys. How un-intuitive.
-I suppose that's more a design decision then anything else. Why would you want to move from button to button if you can activate then using the command-keys ? Redundancy, in my opinion, is mostly a very good way of losing beginner users...
The menus don't have access keys. This is a really annoying feature. Again, you have to click. Admittedly some menu items do have shortcut keys, but you can't access all the items this way, as you can with access keys.
-I'm not sure I see why this would be annoying. If the user is supposed to have and use a mouse, why would he need to be able to do everything by keyboard? Moreover, to do so you'd have to show which key activates which menu, isn't that more information to overload your user with? Finally, to assign a command to all menus and sub-menus always brings up problems; do you really feel that the keys associated with the menu activation or the sub-menu activation on windows are intuitive. In my opinion, the letters often (but not always) have no intuitive relation with the option I'm trying to activate.
-As I look at my netscape, on Linux, I realize that these menus also don't offer keyboard activation (at least if it's feasible, it's not written on the screen). But I know that Alt-F will activate the Find option and Alt-N will bring up a new window. I'm not sure if I need much more from the keyboard but what I am sure about is that I can live with an OS that feels I'll know how to use a mouse to reach the other options/commands.
-For what it's worth, Connectix has been offering what your looking for (all menus, all sub-menus by keyboard) as an option since Speed Doubler 2. Used to work pretty well on my PB190 for those rare times when I didn't want to use the trackpad (which I just didn't like).
Give me a Windows 95/98/2000/NT theme any day. I admit that macs are generally more user friendly (albeit at the expensive of processing power) but some of the points of the interface are just so terrible!
-Although I'm probably just being really picky, I don't believe that you can just make the claim that macs offer a more user friendly U.I at the expense of processing power; remember that Win98 is the OS that allows to have a web page as a background...
As for whether or not the interface is so terrible; I hope, given all the unfounded statements you made and which I tried by the preceding to correct, that you'll change your mind or at least take the time to go back and try a mac before restating anything on an open forum...
Why must stop using symbol/logo? (Score:3)