[HN Gopher] JavaScript Trademark Update
___________________________________________________________________
JavaScript Trademark Update
Author : thebeardisred
Score : 357 points
Date : 2025-06-28 18:52 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (deno.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (deno.com)
| lvl155 wrote:
| Thank you to everyone behind this effort. At some point, decades
| ago in the past, Oracle added value to the tech ecosystem. Now,
| they're a giant rent-extracting behemoth. I hate the fact that we
| can't have nice things in 2025 simply because Oracle owns the IP.
| Oracle is what happens when corporations become lazy and hand
| over the keys to some brand names just because "no one ever got
| fired for buying/hiring _____." I hope those days are past us.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Those days will probably never be behind us because incentive
| structures in companies make employees risk averse.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| When has Oracle ever added value whatsoever to the tech
| ecosystem?
| tombert wrote:
| I don't love Oracle, but GraalVM is pretty cool. That and the
| vanilla JVM keeps getting updates.
| ternaryoperator wrote:
| They've done a ton of stuff with Java, including open-
| sourcing it in its entirety.
| homebrewer wrote:
| If it's an honest question and not just the beginning of a
| hate-fest, let's think...
|
| Both Java the language and OpenJDK the main runtime &
| development kit have had much more money and manpower poured
| into them under Oracle than they ever had previously. Both
| continue to advance rapidly after almost dying pre-Oracle
| acquisition.
|
| MySQL 8 (released in 2018) was a massive release that brought
| many long awaited features (like CTEs) to the database,
| although MySQL's development have stalled during the past few
| years.
|
| Oracle employs several Linux kernel developers and is one of
| major contributors (especially to XFS and btrfs):
| https://lwn.net/Articles/1022414
|
| Not top 3 or even top 10, but better than most companies out
| there.
|
| That's all I can remember.
|
| edit: after thinking about it for a couple more minutes,
| they're also the main developer of GraalVM -- the only high
| quality FOSS AOT compiler for Java (also mentioned by a
| sibling comment), and are writing one of the major relatively
| lightweight modern alternatives to Spring (the other two
| being Micronaut and Quarkus): https://helidon.io
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| people just like hating on successful companies, a HN
| special.. I ignore most those types of posts on this site
| because they are without any merit
| toyg wrote:
| I think the Oracle hate goes a bit beyond the generic
| hatred for successful companies (be it Microsoft, FAANG,
| etc).
|
| People actually used to _like_ the products that made
| these companies explode. Windows 2000 was _cool_ ;
| Facebook was _cool_ ; Google was _cool_. Whenever they
| stop being pure unadulterated evil for a few minutes,
| very quickly a lot of people are willing to forgive them
| and welcome them back into polite society.
|
| But as long as most geeks can remember, Oracle has
| _never_ been cool. At its peak, the company enabled a
| world of snooty BOFH DBAs, selling unreasonably expensive
| products to well-oiled middle-managers. And then they
| started "acqui-squeezing" adjacent products,
| blackmailing their own customers, and suing everyone in
| sight. They could cure cancer tomorrow, gifting all the
| related IPs to the world, and most geeks would still see
| them as scum trying to whitewash their image - and they
| would probably be right. There are some great engineers
| in Oracle, but their management is all that is wrong with
| capitalism.
| kragen wrote:
| From 01979 until about 02000, Oracle's RDBMS software was
| probably the best in the world, and definitely better
| than the free-software alternatives like Postgres.
| (Remember that MariaDB, then named MySQL, didn't become
| free software until 02000 and didn't support transactions
| until even later.) For several years after that, it was
| still the best database for some purposes. And that's
| true even though the Bastard Database Operators From Hell
| were present from the very beginning.
|
| SQL is kind of shitty, but the relational database model
| is so great that it makes up for it. And until the rise
| of entity component systems, SQLite, PostgreSQL, and
| MariaDB, all the decent implementations were proprietary
| software. Separately, although SQL's implementation of
| transactions is even more broken than its implementation
| of the relational model, transactional concurrency is
| also great enough to make up for SQL, and, again, all the
| usable implementations used to be proprietary.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > From 01979 until about 02000, Oracle's RDBMS software
| was probably the best in the world, and definitely better
| than the free-software alternatives like Postgres. [...]
| For several years after that, it was still the best
| database for some purposes.
|
| Which RDBMS software has/have become the best in the
| world after that?
| cerved wrote:
| Postgres presumably
| kragen wrote:
| I don't know. Oracle was written to run on a VAXCluster
| with a shared disk with a seek time in the tens of
| milliseconds, and things like Postgres are kind of
| architected for that world. The world has changed a lot.
| Anything you could fit on disk in 02000 fits in RAM
| today, most of our programmable computing power is in
| GPUs instead of CPUs, website workloads are insanely
| read-heavy (favoring materialized views and readslave
| farms), SSDs can commit transactions durably in 0.1ms and
| support random reads while imposing heavy penalties on
| nonsequential writes, and spinning up ten thousand AWS
| Lambda functions to process a query in parallel is now a
| reasonable thing to do.
|
| I think you could make reasonable arguments for SQLite,
| Postgres, MariaDB, Impala, Hive, HSQLDB, SPARK, Drill, or
| even Numpy, TensorFlow, or Unity's ECS, though those last
| few lack the "internal representation independence" so
| central to Codd's conception.
| Narciss wrote:
| This may be a setup but I gotta ask...why the preceding 0
| in 01979 and 02000?
| arp242 wrote:
| There's also VirtualBox (inherited from Sun). And probably
| some other things. Although from what I heard you risk
| being besieged by aggressive Oracle salespeople if they
| suspect you're using one of the proprietary "extension
| pack" features. This sort of thing is why I would think
| very hard before using anything from Oracle.
| cerved wrote:
| LMS/GLAS
| ksec wrote:
| >although MySQL's development have stalled during the past
| few years.
|
| 9.0 is finally released and we are now at 9.3. While
| nothing big or exciting with every release but development
| is steady. MySQL 8.0 will reach EOL in April 2026 so every
| should move to 8.4 LTS soon(ish) and 9.7x should also be
| LTS by then. I know most on HN is about Postgres but modern
| MySQL is decent. I think a lot of people still have MySQL
| from 5.0 era. Which is also somewhat true with Java as
| well.
|
| I think Oracle do contribute lot of open source code, they
| just dont get the credit or brag about it.
| timeon wrote:
| > MySQL 8 (released in 2018)
|
| Many already moved to MariaDB, because development stalled
| after Oracle bought Sun (which bought MySQL).
| tomnipotent wrote:
| MariaDB has seen decent adoption, but it's still an order
| of magnitude less than MySQL.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Sun Microsystems definitely added value, tons in fact.
|
| Oracle's contributions are less clear-cut, particularly if you
| don't count all the acquired "achievements."
| gardnr wrote:
| Sun did engineering. Oracle does business.
|
| I'd be surprised if Oracle released the trademark without a
| fight to the end. They have a special way of decimating open
| source projects.
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| oracle does engineering just fine, and they are actually
| still around...so maybe Sun was doing it wrong
| hamburglar wrote:
| The quality of engineering varies wildly within Oracle,
| to the point that entire divisions can be relied on to
| produce absolute garbage because longevity completely
| trumps talent. Oracle Cloud has great engineering (which
| these days is quite hampered by bureaucracy and misplaced
| frugality, in my opinion), but outside OCI and a few
| small select orgs, the situation is dire.
|
| At a couple points my org had hiring crunches and
| leadership's short term solution was to find employees
| from other orgs that could be "loaned" to us. The quality
| was universally jaw-droppingly low. I had to do code
| reviews and they would do the craziest junior-developer
| no-standards stuff that would cause their PRs to get
| rejected repeatedly, because not only did they make dumb
| decisions, they didn't even understand the explanations
| of why they were dumb decisions. It was infuriating and a
| horrible waste of time, and the second time around, we
| tried to say we don't want that kind of help, but
| leadership insisted that the free manpower was not
| optional.
| zbentley wrote:
| Quality of engineering and longevity of the company
| producing the engineered product have nothing to do with
| each other.
|
| Evaluated by how useful they are to society at large,
| many businesses _should not_ exist forever--or even for
| very long. Xerox PARC, Kodak, and Netscape are examples
| of companies (or, in PARC 's case, a division of a
| company) that contributed significantly to their fields
| before becoming defunct. Those contributions aren't
| worsened or inferior, somehow, because the companies that
| engineered them are gone.
|
| Whether or not a company is still in business only tells
| you whether a company is _good at keeping itself alive_.
| Over time, that quality is increasingly disconnected from
| whether a company produces valuable goods or services.
| quest88 wrote:
| Who is responsible for the java API updates?
| raverbashing wrote:
| But did Sun actually add anything in relation to JavaScript?
| mosdl wrote:
| The name, it was originally going to be called Livescript.
| reddalo wrote:
| Damn I miss Sun Microsystems products.
| jennyholzer wrote:
| Everyone uses "JavaScript" to describe a language.
|
| Oracle is a parasite.
| nailer wrote:
| If Oracle win we rename the language JS. JS stands for nothing.
| throwawayoldie wrote:
| How about OS, where the "S" now stands for "sucks", and the
| meaning of the "O" is left as an exercise for the reader.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| This will cause confusion with OS for "Open Source".
| AlienRobot wrote:
| No, we rename Javascript to Typelessscript.
| pavlov wrote:
| Typescript--
| magicalhippo wrote:
| .Net compiles to it's IL and who writes raw JavaScript
| these days anyway, so just call it JSIL.
| brian-armstrong wrote:
| We can just start calling it by its full Christian name,
| Eczemascript
| jm4 wrote:
| How about douche-named-Larry-script. Take a page out of
| Apple's playbook when they used the code name Butthead
| Astronomer.
|
| https://www.engadget.com/2014-02-26-when-carl-sagan-sued-
| app...
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Aren't there laws about this? Where "Kleenex" becomes so
| universally }}]%^* )!;&
| 90s_dev wrote:
| Animal Well has an item called "flying disc" or something
| since Frisbee is TM.
|
| To google something has for decades for millenials meant
| search online in any way.
|
| Trademark law is dumb and inconvenient. Only people owning
| trademarks disagree.
|
| But so are many other laws. We all just have to follow them
| all anyway.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Trademark law is what allows me as a consumer to buy a Coke
| and know I'll get a Coke.
|
| I find that convenient, despite owning no trademarks.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| The benefits are so easily taken for granted as just
| being normal parts of life.
|
| Just like how we take for granted that you can count on
| your food label not lying to you and your food not having
| dangerous ingredients, with proper inspections and such.
| WD-42 wrote:
| Pretty sure that's what the whole suit is about.
| tialaramex wrote:
| No.
|
| You're probably thinking of Genericisation. This isn't a law
| in the sense you probably mean, there is no statute about it,
| no legislature wrote it, nobody signed anything. Instead
| Genericisation is a legal doctrine related to the core idea
| in trademark law that we can't have exclusive use of
| descriptive marks.
|
| Suppose you make a Big Car and you try to trademark "Big Car"
| as your exclusive mark for this new product. That's just
| describing the car, it's generic so you can't do that, it's
| OK to trademark "Giganticar" or "Waterluvian Car" or
| something because people can describe what their similar
| product is with the words "big car" but if you were allowed
| to own "Big Car" they can't do that.
|
| Genericisation says well, if your product is _so_ successful
| that now everybody knows what a "Waterluvian" is, and most
| people shown a new big car from say, Ford, say "Waterluvian"
| so that even Ford's sales people struggle to teach the guys
| on the forecourt not to call this a "Waterluvian" - that's
| now a generic term, you can't stop Ford just saying they're
| making a Waterluvian.
|
| Genericisation _only_ applies for crazy famous stuff. Kleenex
| is an example because your mom knows what a kleenex is, the
| guy who mows your lawn knows, Elon Musk knows, everybody
| knows, that 's actually famous. Javascript probably wouldn't
| meet that requirement. My mother does not know what
| Javascript is, my boss does, because he's a software
| engineer, and maybe the average numerate graduate knows, but
| I wouldn't bet a lot of money on it.
|
| Dilution is a related idea, also for very famous things.
| Dilution says for these famous things it's not OK to use the
| famous mark for any other purpose even though it's not
| related. So Disney toilet paper isn't OK, Coca-Cola brand
| vibrators, not OK, and so on. Nobody thinks the vibrator is a
| beverage, but Coke is so famous that doesn't matter. That
| doesn't impact here either.
| Fogest wrote:
| Honestly, I had no idea JavaScript was even a trademarked name.
| I've always just assumed it's the name of a programming
| language and had no idea it had anything to do with Oracle.
|
| I guess I don't feel bad not knowing this though, as the
| language really does have nothing to do with the company it's
| insane that they even hold a trademark for it.
| bobajeff wrote:
| This is one of the things that makes me believe that humanity has
| just about run it's course.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >Everyone uses "JavaScript" to describe a language--not a brand.
|
| It can be both.
|
| >Everyone knows JavaScript isn't an Oracle product
|
| But older people should know that it was a Sun product and Oracle
| bought Sun.
|
| Edit: Sun actually only licensed the name. But in the renewal it
| points to an Oracle product called Oracle JavaScript Extention
| Toolkit.
|
| https://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn75026640&docI...
| nailer wrote:
| No. I was around then and nobody thought of JS as a Sun
| product.
| sockmeistr wrote:
| But it was never a Sun product? Java was a Sun product, giving
| JavaScript a name with "Java" in it was the mistake that
| created this whole mess.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Rename it GoScript this time around.
| mosdl wrote:
| It was livescript originally.
| scosman wrote:
| Java is a Sun product, but Java has nothing to do with
| Javascript except a confusing name overlap.
|
| Javascript was written at Netscape.
| ndiddy wrote:
| The JavaScript name came out of a cross-licensing deal
| between Netscape and Sun where Netscape would bundle a copy
| of the JVM with their browser. Sun needed a way to put the
| JVM on most Windows users' computers to get developers to
| write Java software instead of Windows software, and they
| knew Microsoft wouldn't ship a product that would threaten
| the Windows platform's domination, so they figured that
| bundling with Netscape was their next best option. If you
| read the initial JavaScript press release ( https://www.tech-
| insider.org/java/research/1995/1204.html ), it's mainly
| marketed as a way to write glue code to make it possible for
| Java applets (where the real application logic would go) to
| interact with an HTML page:
|
| > With JavaScript, an HTML page might contain an intelligent
| form that performs loan payment or currency exchange
| calculations right on the client in response to user input. A
| multimedia weather forecast applet written in Java can be
| scripted by JavaScript to display appropriate images and
| sounds based on the current weather readings in a region. A
| server-side JavaScript script might pull data out of a
| relational database and format it in HTML on the fly. A page
| might contain JavaScript scripts that run on both the client
| and the server. On the server, the scripts might dynamically
| compose and format HTML content based on user preferences
| stored in a relational database, and on the client, the
| scripts would glue together an assortment of Java applets and
| HTML form elements into a live interactive user interface for
| specifying a net-wide search for information.
|
| > Java programs and JavaScript scripts are designed to run on
| both clients and servers, with JavaScript scripts used to
| modify the properties and behavior of Java objects, so the
| range of live online applications that dynamically present
| information to and interact with users over enterprise
| networks or the Internet is virtually unlimited. Netscape
| will support Java and JavaScript in client and server
| products as well as programming tools and applications to
| make this vision a reality.
|
| > "Programmers have been overwhelmingly enthusiastic about
| Java because it was designed from the ground up for the
| Internet. JavaScript is a natural fit, since it's also
| designed for the Internet and Unicode-based worldwide use,"
| said Bill Joy, co-founder and vice president of research at
| Sun. "JavaScript will be the most effective method to connect
| HTML-based content to Java applets."
|
| This was all implemented, and Java applets had full
| interoperability with JavaScript. Applets could call
| JavaScript functions, and JavaScript functions could call
| applet methods. Of course over time people gave up on Java
| applets and JavaScript became a good enough language to write
| real application logic directly in it. It's true that
| JavaScript now has virtually nothing to do with Java, but
| that wasn't the case initially, and the name has at least
| some logic behind it.
| adolph wrote:
| I'm trying to imagine the alternative history where James
| Gosling was given several days to develop a workable in-browser
| scripting language instead of Brendan Eich.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| This seems like such a pain in the ass to fight. Why not just
| rename the language? Most people are done with js anyway and just
| use ts.
| throwawayoldie wrote:
| I'd like to believe that most people have switched over to TS
| but I wouldn't count on it until I've seen the numbers, which I
| am currently too lazy to look up.
| oceansky wrote:
| "We're now firmly in the TypeScript era. 67% of respondents
| stated they write more TypeScript than JavaScript code -
| while the single largest group consisted of people who only
| write TypeScript."
|
| https://2024.stateofjs.com/en-US/usage/
| jenadine wrote:
| Btw, The language is called ECMAScript
| echelon wrote:
| Does everyone else pronounce that as "eczema script", too?
| wiseowise wrote:
| "EnemaScript"
| ajkjk wrote:
| no it's not, that's a bureaucratic hoop-jump
| mmastrac wrote:
| Literally nobody, outside of formal documents and perhaps
| pedants, uses that catastrophe of a name.
| runarberg wrote:
| If you are gonna change the name to anything, change it to
| _js_. But also, don't change the name of the language,
| especially not to ECMAScript.
| alberth wrote:
| > a screenshot of the Node.js website to show use of the
| "JavaScript" trademark. As the creator of Node.js, I find that
| especially offensive.
|
| There is some irony in that Ryan isn't acknowledging Node.js own
| trademark in his post, given that he was the person who announced
| the Node.js trademark.
|
| https://nodejs.org/en/blog/uncategorized/trademark
|
| So he wants Node.js trademark to be acknowledged, but doesn't
| acknowledge it himself.
|
| Oracle wants the JavaScript trademark acknowledged, and he
| doesn't want to acknowledge that either.
|
| This all seems very silly to me.
| ray023 wrote:
| "Don't knowledge it" because he did not put a stupid TM sign in
| every blog posts he writes mentioning Node.js is a stretch.
| alberth wrote:
| There's no acknowledgment of Node.js trademark on Deno.com
| ... and the landing page is largely about how much better
| Deno is over Node.js.
|
| Of all places to put trademark acknowledgement, it'd be there
| - and it's missing.
|
| https://deno.com/
| nosefurhairdo wrote:
| Ryan's post explaining the decision to trademark node seems
| pretty reasonable to me. Does Oracle have a similarly credible
| justification for maintaining the JavaScript trademark?
| fredfish wrote:
| AFAIK Sun gave Netscape free use of the JavaScript Trademark
| purely to side with Netscape against Microsoft in the browser
| wars, language wars, etc. I would think there is still
| something related to the original agreement.
|
| It looks like JScript is still trademarked by Microsoft, why
| not ask them to do whatever the community thinks is right for
| ECMAScript names and then we can all refer to the language a
| little faster?
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I feel like misplaced criticism.
|
| Javascript has become such a ubiquitous term that its copyright
| status is increasingly tenuous. Node.js by contrast has no such
| problem, yet. Most of the industry supports this initiative,
| and dumping on the people willing to invest the time and money
| to fix it once and for all, over seemingly irrelevant things
| feels petty.
| torstenvl wrote:
| Trademark is not copyright.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Related: https://javascript.tm/
| bangaladore wrote:
| Hugged to death on my end
| flkenosad wrote:
| Node is about to become irrelevant. As soon as Microsoft ships
| TypeScript 7.
| rockwotj wrote:
| Can you elaborate? Are you conflating node and javascript?
| cakoose wrote:
| Why will TypeScript 7 make Node.js irrelevant?
|
| In TypeScript 7, the compiler will be written in Go instead of
| TS. But the compiler will still produce JS code as its output
| and so Node.js is still relevant for running that JS code.
|
| Or is there something else about TypeScript 7 that will make
| Node.js irrelevant?
| cluckindan wrote:
| How does a 10x faster TS to JS compiler make a JS runtime
| irrelevant?
| roman_soldier wrote:
| Typescript 7 is not a replacement for node, it is a language
| spec and compiler, but Bun _could_ be the preferred choice for
| dev using a Javascript runtime.
| wiseowise wrote:
| You made a fool of yourself.
| mbStavola wrote:
| Looking at the reasoning[0]: > To plead a claim
| of fraud, petitioner must plead that: (1) respondent made a false
| representation to the USPTO; (2) respondent had knowledge of the
| falsity of the representation; (3) the false representation was
| material to the continued registration of the mark, and (4)
| respondent made the representation with the intent to deceive the
| USPTO. > A claim of fraud must set forth all elements
| of the claim with a heightened degree of particularity [...]
| Indeed, "the pleadings [must] contain explicit rather than
| implied expressions of the circumstances constituting the fraud."
| In addition, intent to deceive the USPTO is a specific element of
| a fraud claim, and must be sufficiently pleaded >
| Essentially, Petitioner's theory of fraud is based on allegations
| that the specimen of use submitted with Respondent's maintenance
| documents do not show use by the proper party. It is well-settled
| that the proper ground for cancellation is the underlying
| question of whether the mark was in use in commerce, not the
| adequacy of the specimens [...] the insufficiency of the
| specimens, per se, does not constitute grounds for cancellation;
| the proper ground for cancellation is that the term has not been
| used as a mark
|
| From what I understand, TTAB is stating that simply showing that
| Oracle improperly submitting Node.js as a use of mark does not
| constitute fraud because the intent to deceive was not explicit.
| It's a bit frustrating because if its not _fradulent_ the only
| thing I am left to believe is that they were _negligent_.
|
| To file for a mark or renewal of a mark and claim ownership of
| something you _do not own_ is insane. It 's not like this is a 5
| second process or that there isn't a lot of money riding on
| this-- this sort of thing is super serious and incredibly
| important! You're telling me _no one_ at Oracle or their counsel
| was able to catch this in review before filing? As far as I can
| tell, in the renewal for the mark[1], Node.js was the _sole_
| specimen provided as an example of mark use! Come on...
|
| EDIT: Sorry, correction, they have _three_ specimens attached to
| the renewal, two of which seem to be the same. Clearly an
| insurmountable amount of work and too complicated to validate.
|
| [0]:
| https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=92086835&pty=CAN&eno...
|
| [1]:
| https://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn75026640&docI...
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| Deno should start a campaign with the slogan "Did you know that
| JavaScript has nothing to do with Java? (except for court
| trials)"
|
| I'd donate.
| twoodfin wrote:
| I don't mean to be pedantic, but beyond the deliberate
| syntactic echoes, JavaScript and Java were the first two
| languages with (incompatible!) object-oriented data models
| _enforced by the runtime_ to achieve widespread adoption with
| longevity (sorry, Smalltalk!)
|
| Python was invented earlier, but didn't see wide use until
| later.
|
| And that they were both massively accelerated by the level of
| interest in the early WWW is undeniable. No other general
| purpose languages can say that except perhaps Perl, and it
| slowly burned out.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| Interesting point, but I'm not able to judge the trutfulness.
|
| So the JVM has a runtime-enforced nominal type system (and
| object model) with classes.
|
| But JS, to my knowledge, only has primitive types enforced at
| runtime, and no nomimal class system, unless you basically
| implement it yourself?
|
| Uh, edit: maybe I get you now, it does have that in a way.
| But prototype identity and "instanceof" are rarely used in
| practise.
|
| Maybe I'm missing your point here. Answering at late local
| time.
|
| It would be so great to have a nominal type system in the
| browser though.
|
| So many JS librarlies have their own version of it, and it
| causes insufferable headaches when combined with TypeScript.
|
| Like, they use complicated hacks to make sure that their
| library objects are not structurall/duck typed.
| twoodfin wrote:
| classes != objects
|
| Yes, the typing and semantic models are wildly different.
| The point is that they're primitive in a way that the other
| widespread alternative, C++, did not inherit from its
| Cfront heritage.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Well, the models were in so far compatible as that JavaScript
| could access them to some degree from applets. Which is why
| they picked the name ...
| moralestapia wrote:
| I might not be popular for this but JavaScript is indeed a
| trademark which Oracle rightfully owns these days. This is fair
| play.
|
| However, I do believe the word has been diluted and genericized
| and hope the USPTO chooses to release it.
|
| A good argument to avoid losing a trademark to genericization is
| to show that there is an actual generic term that overlaps with
| the trademark, but then the trademark is not the generic term
| itself.
|
| Examples:
|
| Nintendo - Video Game Console
|
| Post-it - Sticky Note
|
| Xerox - Photocopy
|
| etc ...
|
| In the case of JavaScript, there's no generic term to allude to;
| JavaScript _is_ the generic term, which might weigh towards the
| argument of genericization.
| mmastrac wrote:
| > JavaScript is indeed a trademark which Oracle rightfully owns
| these days
|
| Err, that's not a given by any stretch. This is exactly what
| the suit is trying to prove. They are not a rightful holder of
| the trademark. They've failed to show use in commerce, and one
| of their examples of use was someone else's.
| moralestapia wrote:
| But it is an Oracle trademark, [1].
|
| And here's one (trivial, but valid) use of it [2].
|
| I'm sure Ellison lawyer's can come up with thousands of
| examples of JavaScript being used within the context of
| Oracle's business activities.
|
| The way to go is fight for genericization (or start calling
| it ECMAScript, lmao).
|
| 1: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=75026640&caseSearchType
| =U...
|
| 2: https://docs.oracle.com/en/database/oracle/oracle-
| database/2...
| vips7L wrote:
| Oracle develops, maintains, and sells 2 different
| JavaScript runtimes. They're definitely using it.
| nkrisc wrote:
| These (along with Kleenex) are common examples of
| genericization, yet I assume through diligence on the part of
| those brands, I hear and see the actual generic terms used far
| more frequently. For example, I've never heard anyone under the
| age of 70 (by now) use "Nintendo" to mean any video game
| console. "Sticky note", "photocopy", and "tissue" are terms I
| personally hear used much more frequently than "Post-it",
| "Xerox", or "Kleenex", respectively.
|
| But for "JavaScript"? What else is there? "JS"?
|
| Edit: I guess there's "ECMAScript", but who actually says that
| (aside when they legally need to)?
| charcircuit wrote:
| I've only heard Xerox be used like that once in my life. I
| was so confused what a company that invented the mouse had to
| do with what the person was talking about.
| maxk42 wrote:
| Oracle, to my knowledge, does not profit at all off of the
| JavaScript name or brand. I don't see the purpose of defending
| this lawsuit. They have an opportunity to create some goodwill
| here, hold a press release, and say "We're gifting the JavaScript
| trademark to the developer community!" But instead they're
| defending something that they literally do not profit off of.
| It's absurd.
| relativeadv wrote:
| Oracle is doing something petty and absurd? Are you sure?
| kstrauser wrote:
| The hell, you say!
| drdaeman wrote:
| Nowadays, it's a lawyer company - not a technology/software
| company. Their only reason for existence is to keep selling
| licenses for the things they own for as long as they still can,
| so it's pretty natural they're holding on to anything
| (regardless of actual value) they can.
| vips7L wrote:
| It's a huge company with different divisions.
|
| Oracle is one of the leading researchers in JIT compilers,
| garbage collectors, and language interpreters.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Back when Oracle acquired Sun they told us "Sun had more
| lawyers per capita than we"
|
| Interpretation on the fact and metric and the need to tell I
| leave up to you
| WD-42 wrote:
| They have lawyers that need to justify their salary. Also why
| would they give up something for nothing. This is the "market
| forces" at work.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think this is key. When you hire people to do work, they'll
| find stuff to do even if it isn't really necessary or a long
| term good for the company.
|
| My favorite other example of this is when I see a UI redesign
| that didn't actually benefit anyone and was more a style
| change than anything, and sometimes actively makes usability
| worse ( _cough_ Liquid Glass _cough_ ) In those situations I
| always think "well, some designers on staff needed to justify
| their paychecks".
| lovich wrote:
| These are all the result of the principal agent problem
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/principal-agent-
| problem...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think this is actually a bit different than the
| principal agent problem, at least how the principal agent
| problem is normally described and envisioned.
|
| E.g. you often imagine cases like a manager making a
| decision that causes a short term pop in stock price (and
| bonuses to the manager) to the detriment of the long term
| health of the company when thinking about the principal
| agent problem. In the cases I'm thinking about, though,
| it's more that people rarely can do nothing, even if
| that's sometimes the best thing to do. E.g. large
| companies need to have lawyers and designers on staff for
| lots of reasons. But sometimes there just isn't enough
| work for these folks to do (even if they need to be
| "warm" and ready when important work comes along). And if
| there isn't enough work to do, these people will find
| work to do.
|
| This is another reason why I think that, even though
| layoffs are painful, having people "milling about"
| without clear direction and purpose is the worst for
| everyone involved. These people will just schedule
| meetings, insert themselves where it isn't helpful, etc.,
| just to make it seem like they have a purpose.
|
| This could be thought of as a "variant" of the principal
| agent problem I guess, but this instance of "idle hands
| are the devil's playthings" is different enough from the
| "standard" principal agent problem that I don't think
| it's helpful to conflate these two things.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > But sometimes there just isn't enough work for these
| folks to do (even if they need to be "warm" and ready
| when important work comes along). And if there isn't
| enough work to do, these people will find work to do.
|
| It is possible to find work in a different area at the
| company for such in-between times.
|
| For example at the company where I work, a (very capable)
| secretary whose original role was not needed anymore, but
| for who there existed a very role in the future was for
| the in-between time assigned to assist some other
| department in their reporting duties to regulating
| authorities.
| snickerdoodle12 wrote:
| Goodwill isn't "nothing", but good luck explaining that to a
| lawyer.
| NBJack wrote:
| Probably a reflexive action at this point. Ingrained into
| what's left of their soul I assume.
|
| It literally wouldn't surprise me if when asked, the legal team
| simply responded "it's standing policy".
| theturtle32 wrote:
| "soul"? Oracle never had one in the first place.
| arp242 wrote:
| Lawnmowers are incapable of caring about goodwill.
| homebrewer wrote:
| They could reverse 90% of their brand damage in one swing by
| simply updating CDDL to allow integrating ZFS with GPL, which
| also wouldn't cost them anything as far as I'm aware, but we're
| both making the mistake of anthropomorphizing the lawnmower.
| ksec wrote:
| >by simply updating CDDL
|
| How about a simpler solution, just relicense everything to
| BSD / MIT.
| ndiddy wrote:
| The version of ZFS that everybody (besides the dwindling
| number of Oracle Solaris customers) uses now, OpenZFS, has
| been maintained completely independently of Oracle since
| they shut down OpenSolaris in 2010. This means that Oracle
| relicensing ZFS wouldn't do anything to help with getting
| it integrated into the Linux kernel, since there's been
| hundreds of independent contributors to ZFS since then who
| all own their own copyrights. Because ZFS is licensed under
| the CDDL, which has an automatic upgrade clause, Oracle
| could simply copy/paste the GPLv2 license text and call it
| "CDDL v2" if they wanted to make ZFS able to be included in
| Linux.
| saghm wrote:
| Swapping to an entirely new license rather than adding one
| sentence to the existing one is not simpler either in terms
| of linguistics or getting approval from their army of
| lawyers.
| muglug wrote:
| > They could reverse 90% of their brand damage
|
| Their stock is 50% higher than it was a year ago.
|
| Not quite sure this is doing them damage.
| Lerc wrote:
| Making a concession when they have not been forced to might
| indicate weakness to some. In that sense showing a speck of
| humanity might actually harm their stock.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > They could reverse 90% of their brand damage in one swing
| by simply updating CDDL to allow integrating ZFS with GPL
|
| ZFS can be run under Linux - combining the Linux kernel with
| ZFS is a collective work (collection) of two independent
| works.
| justinator wrote:
| Well you just used "Oracle" and "JavaScript" in the same
| sentence so it seems it's useful to them to reinforce their
| brand.
|
| Whoever thinks it's a good idea to bet on the altruism of a
| giant faceless corporation is dumb.
| tgma wrote:
| I mean I get Oracle hate and stuff, but remember the great and
| lovely Sun Microsystems used all tricks in the bag against
| Microsoft with respect to Java late 90s/early 2000s.
|
| So, is "X abuses IP law" hatred is out of principle or because
| folks seem to be in love with Sun and Google and hate Oracle
| and Microsoft.
| randyrand wrote:
| No need to "gift" it. It would be better if no one owned the
| trademark. Put it in the public domain.
|
| I'm not sure if that's even possible under US law though.
| burnte wrote:
| Oracle is a law firm that sells IP. They'd rather control and
| strangle the name JavaScript than let people use it without
| their control.
| N7lo4nl34akaoSN wrote:
| They profit through conflation with Java.
| xyst wrote:
| Oracle and "goodwill" in the same sentence is laughable.
| greggsy wrote:
| This is the wrong way to look at it from a business
| perspective. They don't directly profit off licensing or
| support or anything like that, but they gain free advertising.
|
| They gain absolutely nothing by handing over the name and brand
| - in fact they lose valuable brand recognition.
|
| Obviously most people in the industry hate them with a passion
| (see this thread as evidence), but many see the association as
| evidence that they might at least have some expertise with that
| product set. I certainly don't agree with their position, but
| it makes sense commercially.
| msinclair wrote:
| How are they going to lose brand recognition, when a majority
| of people do not associate JavaScript with Oracle? The only
| language I associate with Oracle is Java.
| pikuseru wrote:
| Can I invent a language called Larry Ellison Script and trademark
| it
| spullara wrote:
| my guess is that they feel there is risk in releasing the
| javascript trademark to the java trademark.
| Hilift wrote:
| Imagine toiling all those years to make J* products usable, only
| to have Larry Ellison bigfoot everything.
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