Re:New License (Score 1)

The reason Sun (and any other company with trademarks or servicemarks) appends nouns to their marks is to protect the trademark. The way trademark law works here is that you have to actively protect your trademarks or else lose them to common usage. The textbook example is Xerox, where "xeroxing" became a generic term for photocopying paper. Because Xerox didn't do enough to discourage the generic use of their trademarks, they ended up losing their trademark protections.

It's the same reason why Google officially wants you to "use a Google search for 'trademark issues'", not 'google 'trademark issues'".

I make no claims about how useful or rational or successful this legal strategy is, but that's the back-story.