O'Reilly and CMP Exercise Trademark on 'Web 2.0'

theodp writes "On May 16, the USPTO notified CMP Media, which co-presents the Web 2.0 Conference with O'Reilly, that its trademark for Web 2.0 was entitled to be registered. Eight days later, CMP sicced its lawyers on not-for-profit IT@Cork, taking the networking organization to task for not only using the term Web 2.0 for its free conference, but also for linking to a What is Web 2.0 article penned by Tim O'Reilly." It should be noted that their trademark only applies to the titles of industry events (CMP is a show organizer).

Re:"only applies to the titles of industry events"

[RingDev]

A more accurate comparison would be "Windows"

Microsoft is a "Windows" company
So are Anderson, Jeld Wen, Pella, and many others.

(IANAL, but IMO:) Point being, no one (so far as I know) can trademark "Windows". They can trademark "Microsoft:Windows" or "Windows by Anderson", but the object in the title is just to ambiguous. So maybe these companies should be allowed to trademark "[Company Name]'s Web 2.0" but not just "Web 2.0"

-Rick

Re:Well then...

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Nah. We just need to go to 2.1, and open source the trademark on that. It's certainly a bigger upgrade than most releases.

Is anyone else more than mildly disappointed that they own a bookshelf full of O'reilly books after reading this?