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SuSE Businesses

Preliminary Injunction Against SuSE 246

Posted by Hemos from the time-to-get-out-the-fish dept.
Random Walk writes "The German news site Heise Online reports that on behalf of an anonymous client, a lawyer has won a preliminary injunction (German only) against the Linux distributor SuSE. The injunction forbids the delivery of SuSE CDs as long as they contain some program name that apparently violates a registered trademark. No more details available, but SuSE seems to be in negotiations with the other party." Head over to the fish for translation.
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Preliminary Injunction Against SuSE More

Preliminary Injunction Against SuSE

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  • Who? (Score:1)

    by djweis ( 4792 )
    Who is it and will this affect all of the other distributions? Perhaps some other company makes a yast??

  • Killustrator again? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @08:43AM (#2803309) Homepage
    Remember the Adobe vs Killustrator case? That was in Germany too. Someone said that it's common practice for legal firms to act 'freelance' and track down supposed violations without the prior approval of the trademark holder. Perhaps this is the same firm even.
    • probably just someone getting upset about Kivio this time. can't the K guys tink up original names for their apps? QT Swine.

    • Re:Killustrator again? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      So why don't the developers on the KDE
      project quit naming their applications
      such that they can be confused or mistaken
      for registered products. Seems easy enough
      and it solves the whole problem.

      • Re:Killustrator again? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by HiThere ( 15173 ) <charleshixsn @ e a r t h l i nk.net> on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @10:45AM (#2803969)
        How does one find out what names are registered? In every country?

        Now, true, KIllustrator was a clear reference, but it was clearly distinguishable, would not cause confusion, didn't run on the same operating system, etc. So a decent lawyer and an honest court would have thrown the case out. But that would have cost a lot of time and money.

        Again, possibly the lawyer was at fault, but Adobe didn't say "boo", so I haven't forgiven them, and don't intend to. I no longer recommend Adobe products. Ever. That was before they sic-ed the feds on Dimitry, and I must admit that that was the final touch, but even that first act would have taken quite a while to forgive, just by itself.

        Adobe sees that it's big enough to act like a bully. To me this means that I don't want to give them any money or any credit for anything. They are treacherous. Unreliable. And companies that act like that generally fail within a couple of decades (of course there's MS, but Adobe isn't anywhere near that tough, and there are signs that MS is on its way down too).

        If you need a graphics program for a Windows or Mac, may I recommend that you look into Deneba Canvas. It's what I use on that side, and I'm quite pleased with it.
        .
        • Gawd... how sad... boycotting a company because they're protecting their trademark.

          The reason KIllustrator was named what it was named was that so you would instantly recognize it as being a free knock-off of an Adobe product.

          It's like how "Kam" sounds enough like "Spam" for you to know right off the bat that it's a similar product.

          There are two reasons I can thing of for the KDE guys do this:

          1) They think it's clever, like all the recursive GNU names... fair enuff.
          2) They don't spend any time/money on marketing, so they have no other way to let you know what their product does before you try it, or browse specifically for it.

          So in short, the KDE guys are piggy-backing on trademarks to publicize their functional-equivalent products - which in my books, isn't right.
  • After Samba[1 ] and the kIllustrator[2 ] now a further open SOURCE program employs the lawyers. The attorney Guenter Frhr. v. Gravenreuth obtained a provisional order against the German Linux Distributor SuSE before the regional court Munich. The cause seems to be one on the SuSE d referenzierte open SOURCE often commodity. Gravenreuth let obvious forbid to the Nuernberger enterprise judicially to deliver its Linux distribution further as long as on it the disputed program name is contained. For SuSE from it a substantial financial loss could arise, if the copies already produced could not be issued any longer. Frhr. v. Gravenreuth acknowledged on demand a provisional order against the indication of an open SOURCE often commodity to have received. It did not want to call further details however, since its mandator " with the opponent agree " become and require no denomination. Christian Egle, press speaker of the SuSE GmbH, explained, his enterprise in the next days as the affair will express themselves

    • In English this time (somewhat easier to read) (Score:5, Informative)

      by uebernewby ( 149493 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @09:00AM (#2803413) Homepage
      After Samba and kIllustrator, yet another open source program is in trouble. A regional court in Munich granted attorney general v. Gravenreuth a preliminary injunction against German Linux distributor SuSE. Apparently, the reason has to do with one of the open source programs contained in the SuSE distribution. The injunction forbids SuSE to continue distributing their product until the name of this program is changed. This could lead to SuSE suffering a substantial financial loss, as they can no longer sell CD's they've already manufactured.

      Attorney general v. Gravenreuth confirmed he was requested to file suit on behalf of a third party, but declined to give further details, at the request of said third party. Christian Eagle, head of public relations at SuSE, stated his company will provide more information at a later date.

      ok, so it's not shakespeare, but it's readable at least.
      • well thank fuck for that. i thought i was going mad, but no, they really don't mention which program is causing all the trouble.
      • I don't know where the poster got this from but Freiherr von Gravenreuth is NOT an Attorney General. He is just a lawyer working for his own money.
      • Is the distributor allowed to change the name of a program? I would have thought that this would be a copyright violation in itself.
        • How would changing the name violate copyright? If the program is GPL, I see no reason the name or anything else has to remain static, with the exception of the license itself and the copyright notices and the other notices stipulated by the license (essentially, there must be a copy of the GPL and what amounts to a copyright and changes history in all modified GPL packages).

          In fact, the right to change the name is of paramount importance. If the original name is a trademark (think Linux), then I can't fork the product without violating trademark rules *unless* I can change the name.

      • Let me try... (Score:5, Funny)

        by Decimal ( 154606 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @12:30PM (#2804449) Homepage Journal
        Huh. How did you get that result?

        This is what I was given:

        ----
        In A.D. 2002, war was beginning. What happen? SuSe get signal. Main injunction turn on. It's Gravenreuth! A regional court in Munich say "How are you gentlemen! All SuSe distribution are belong to us. You have no chance to survive make your time." Apparently, somebody set SuSe up the bomb. The injunction forbids SuSE to continue to take off every 'zig' until SuSe knows what they are doing.

        Attorney general v. Gravenreuth confirmed he was requested to send SuSe on the way to destruction on behalf of a third party, but declined to give further details. What Suse say! Christian Eagle, head of public relations at SuSe, stated his company will move 'zig' and provide more information at a later date. For great justice.
        ----

        Huh. Maybe I accidentally translated into Japanese first...
    • (Score:3, Informative) ?

      Informative? I understood the german much more...

      ... and I took spanish and latin!

  • comedic gold (Score:1, Redundant)

    by nomadic ( 141991 )
    Babelfish translation:

    Gravenreuth against Linux Distributor SuSE
    After Samba and kIllustrator now a further open SOURCE program employs the lawyers. The attorney Guenter Frhr. v. Gravenreuth obtained a provisional order against the German Linux Distributor SuSE before the regional court Munich. The cause seems to be one on the SuSE d referenzierte open SOURCE often commodity. Gravenreuth let obvious forbid to the Nuernberger enterprise judicially to deliver its Linux distribution further as long as on it the disputed program name is contained. For SuSE from it a substantial financial loss could arise, if the copies already produced could not be issued any longer.

    Frhr. v. Gravenreuth acknowledged on demand a provisional order against the indication of an open SOURCE often commodity to have received. It did not want to call further details however, since its mandator " with the opponent agree " become and require no denomination. Christian Egle, press speaker of the SuSE GmbH, explained, his enterprise in the next days as the affair will express themselves. ( odi / c't)

    Does OSDN own stock in altavista or something?

  • Let's see... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by BreakWindows ( 442819 )
    http://www.suse.com/en/products/suse_linux/i386/pa ckages_professional/index.html
    http://www.suse.com/en/products/suse_linux/i386/ pa ckages_personal/index.html

    Ok, not sure if NVIDIA_kernel is actually made by Nvidia, that would do it.

    The spell checker iGerman...maybe Mac was planning a lager-scented blond powerbook.

    sax and sax2 seem to be SuSe specific...but I don't think anyone can sue over a name like "sax". Too generic.

    "TerminatorX" is an audio mixer...though I think Public Enemy would shoot first, and bring the lawyers later...

    You know, this could take a while...the company distributes 8 goddamn CD's full of litigation-feed.
  • I remember the OpenSSH guys were having trademark problems. Could it be related to that?
  • I imagine this has something to do with some product like Killustrator or some other knock of open-source product. So whoever this is was having trouble changing the program's name, so they decided to go after everyone who uses it. Sounds like someone is taking leasons from M$.
    • This point has been discussed a trillion times on slashdot. If someone has a commercial product with one name, and someone else releases a similar product (or even an unsimilar product) that clearly impinges on their trademark, the first party has every bloody right to protect their trademark.

      Software authors, think of original names for your products, end of!
      • The thing is that sometimes a name describes what a piece of software does (like Illustrator) and coming up with names that describe what it does but aren't deceptively similar can be difficult. I mean what would you call an illustration program - KDraw (oops that's CorelDraw), KPaint (that's MS Paint). Maybe they should call it "An Application for KDE that uses Vector Graphics to draw pretty pictures"
        • Hmmm - I think KIllustrator was quite clearly taking the piss, as is Lindows. I would be very surprised if you ran into a lawsuit with KPaint (for MS Paint), as it is a paint program. To give another example, KWord (for MS Word) would be taking the piss, as 'Word' doesn't necessarily fully describe what the product is.

          To sidestep a little, who on earth would dare approach such a scarily large project as to try and emulate all of MSPaint's vast functionality on Linux???
      • if a work exists in a dictionary it should not be a trademark by itself, ie word. These words belong to all in the culture.


        my $0.02

  • It doesn't make any sense (Score:4, Insightful)

    by uebernewby ( 149493 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @09:02AM (#2803432) Homepage
    If you're sueing someone from infringing your trademark, why would you want to keep your trademark a secret?
    • Perhaps his main aim is an extrajudicial agreement? In this case he is not forced to reveal the owner of the trademark. I would guess the owner of the trademark is someone well known who prefers to stay anonymous. (just imagine it would be another linux distributer), and a settlement outside court is quite likely. SuSE looses a lot of money every day they can't sell boxes, so they can't wait for a court decision to long.
    • Remember the bad press Adobe [kde.org] recieved over a similar action against an Open Source project, perhaps whoever this is, wants avoid more of the same.
    • Possible reasons for not releasing more details:
      1. Doesn't want to be faced with large numbers of complaints about the action, some at least of which will be ill-considered and ill-mannered,
      2. Doesn't want to court/ risk bad publicity,
      3. Doesn't want Suse to receive large numbers of expressions of support, some at least of which will be well-considered and may help Suse resist the claim.
      Or something else entirely. Until more details are known it's too soon to say.
    • Since it's about a pretty generic term, my guess is

      • They trademarked the term for the sole purpose on cashing in on people accidentally violating it, therefore publishing the trademark would kill their business model.
        Evil, but not beyond Gravenreuth or someone doing business with that guy.
      • They don't want the bad press and public discussion about trademarking generic words.
    • Extortion is the most reasonable hypothesis. True, it's being done under color of law, so perhaps extortion is not precisely the correct term, but I can't think of a better one.

      This appears precisely cognate to the folks who register web-site URLs with company names, and then barely use them (perhaps only post an "Under-Construction" page). That, however, has been ruled illegal.
      .

  • Gravenreuth (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nr1 ( 164056 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @09:05AM (#2803444) Homepage
    I don't know how many of you are aware of this, but this Gravenreuth guy, the attorney, is one of the most hated men in the German IT scene. He has been going to court over cases like these for at least ten years.
    I once got a letter from him: Back in the old Amiga days, i posted a classified ad somewhere, since i wanted to sell some of my old hardware. A couple of days later, I got a letter from some girl (including picture), who listed some of her games and wanted to trade.
    Back then, I heard of these Gravenreuth tactics, so I just threw it away. Even writing some witty response on the illegality of the proposal would have probably invited some action from the law firm.
    • Interesting. Do you have anything to back this up?

      • Interesting. Do you have anything to back this up?


        This made the (it-) media back then. Just search
        google for Gravenreuth, you'll find a lot of links
        about him - most of it in german, though. Guess
        that'll give babelfish some work to do.

      • Re:Gravenreuth (Score:5, Informative)

        by Antity ( 214405 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @09:30AM (#2803579) Homepage

        Much of Gravenreuth's tactics in these days happened in the German magazine "64'er". I think this has also been covered in this magazine itself once. The scheme was more or less the same every time: Some people (kids, in most cases) annonced something in the private ads part of the magazine. A computer game, for example, but not a copy. They were then contacted by some girl by snail-mail, often including a photo (the same photo, but different names for the girl..) who was interested in the ad. She then asked, if one would like to "trade" some other games. If the victim sent back a list of (copied..) games back, he was sued a short time after.

        So this "girl" *asked* to trade her copied software and then sued the people who responded in the name of the software company.

        Gravenreuth later started to work for companies like Symicron. Symicron claimed to have an older Trademark "Explorer", and Gravenreuth successfully negotiated some sum of money with Microsoft (they did this instead of going to court; hell knows why). The point is that Symicron hasn't proven yet that an actual Symicron product called "Explorer" ever existed. But they, with Gravenreuth as lawyer, continue to sue nearly everybody who uses the name "Explorer" in Germany for computer thingies. Like a tool named "FTP-Explorer" and so on.

        They even went to court against Heise (which host the newsticker that this Slashdot story is based on), because they just put one of these tools *named* with something like "Explorer" on their CD for the printed magazine "c't". They threatened to go to _every_ shop that had this issue of the magazine legally to frighten them so sell it.

        There are lots of stories about Gravenreuth. Most of the very details are not known because it's always legal affairs and you can easily be sued yourself by Gravenreuth if he claims you wrote something that is not correct or not publically proven.

        So, of course this whole posting is just IMHO, AFAIK and AFAIR, and IANAL, and nothing of all this is true anyway.... (I'm living in Germany.)

      • Re:Gravenreuth (Score:2, Interesting)

        by nr1 ( 164056 )
        try this, the Gravenreuth FAQ from the CCC Cologne:

        Gravenreuth FAQ [koeln.ccc.de]

        In case you need the fish. [altavista.com]

      • Re:Gravenreuth (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Antity ( 214405 )

        Interesting. Do you have anything to back this up?

        Here is a scan [ruhr-uni-bochum.de] (German) from 1992 that is supposed to be one of the letters that this "Girl" wrote to cluesless people to convince them to copy games and trade them with her (which resulted in aforementioned law company to contact you if you responded).

        Yes, back in 1992. Looks like there are always ways to make money by frightening people.

    • Re:Gravenreuth (Score:4, Informative)

      by rkit ( 538398 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @09:33AM (#2803599) Homepage
      for those of you who speak german: there is even a gravenreuth-FAQ: http://www.klostermaier.de/fvg/faq.html
    • ... isn't that entrapment (and therefore inadmissable as evidence) in common-law jurisdictions ?

      • lawyer: nope, butcould be estoppel (Score:5, Interesting)

        by hawk ( 1151 ) <hawk@eyry.org> on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @09:49AM (#2803703) Journal
        I am a lawyer, but am probably not licensed in your jurisdiction. This is not legal advice, but a statement of general principles. If you apply this to your own situation, you are a moron.


        Entrapment is a criminal doctrine, not civil. It applies to the police going too far--convincing someone to commit a crime they otherwise would not (simply asking or offering the crime isn't enough.). THink of Delorean (sp?). The goverment harassed a man with a failing business with repeated opportunities to commit a lucrative time, after repeatedly being told no. They *created* the criminal. This is a far cry from a one time offer.


        WHile this doesn't apply, the doctrine of "estoppel" could potentially apply. In a nutshell, this doctrine says, "even though you may be legally correct, your own conduct makes it inequitable for you to be able to make that argument, so you can't."


        It would probably be a close call as described above.


        hawk, common law lawyer

    • Why is putting an ad up to sell old hardware illegal? Or something that a law firm would want to 'entrap' someone over?
      • Putting up an ad to sell old hardware isn't illegal not even in germany ;). Gravenreuth used this ad and similiar ad to collect addresses of computer users. Then he sends faked mails to all the these addresses. In these mails he writes that he is a little girl that wants to swap software. If someone answers the mail, he tries to sue him and collect legal fees.
      • Why is putting an ad up to sell old hardware illegal? Or something that a law firm would want to 'entrap' someone over?

        It isn't. You have to know a little more about the RESPONSE he got to know what he was talking about. In some of the other posts, you'll read that the girl's response (with her picture) was probably an attempt by the aforementioned "dirt" lawyer to entice him into "trading" copies of software. This practice, of course, would have been illegal. That's why he just threw away the letter and didn't respond.

        I would personally take that approach with ANYBODY who sent their picture in a letter of that type. Either it's an attempt to trap me in something illegal, or there's something else wierd going on. Why on earth WOULD you send your picture to a perfect stranger?

    • I don't know how many of you are aware of this, but this Gravenreuth guy, the attorney, is one of the most hated men in the German IT scene. He has been going to court over cases like these for at least ten years.

      A similar thing happened in Silicon Valley. A guy got a patent on the bitwise-XOR cursor. This firm of three lawyers got hold of it. Then every time a hi-tek company was going public - WHETHER THEY USED AN XOR CURSOR OR NOT - they'd file suit. And offer to settle for some non-trivial pittance like $10,000.

      Now going public is a touchy proposition, and having a suit pending against you can cost you big time, regardless of the suit's merits. So essentially all the companies knuckled under. It amounted to a small tax on going public.

      And the people in question were the most hated in the Silicon Valley financial community for a decade or more. (There were rumors that a hit had been contracted...)

      (Funny thing - I once worked for a company that had a patent on the BLINKING cursor, back in the days of character-only terminals. They never used it for this sort of thing - or litigated it at all. Instead they kept it in the pile of patents to be used in a countersuit against anyone who sued THEM for patent infringement.)

  • German lawyers have this strange tool... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AtariDatacenter ( 31657 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @09:08AM (#2803455)
    If I remember correctly, and it was shown on Slashdot, an open source project was sued by a german lawyer for trademark violation and created a lot of ill will. What happened, if memory serves, is that in Germany, a lawyer can sue for trademark violation, even without the knowledge, consent, or business dealings with the party being 'violated'.

    Great system, huh? So, a lawyer found a trademark violation, and is going after it. Fun stuff. I'm sure we'll see even more.

  • Gravenreuth (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 4im ( 181450 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @09:11AM (#2803472)

    This lawyer v. Gravenreuth is quite well known (and hated) in Germany. He's done lots of "Abmahnungen". This means cashing in money for stuff like usage of the term "FTP Explorer" which supposedly violates a Trademark of Symicron (sp?). A case of use of a chipset codename by shops for advertisement is also well-known.

    Of course, he only evers goes after smaller fish, but doesn't dare trying the same with bigger companies (unfortunately, or he'd at last get his nose bloody).

    I really wonder which name and company this is all about. I'd hate to see SuSE hurt for one of Gravenreuth's usual BS. They definitely need to spend their money on improving their distro, not on laywers (saying this as a long-time SuSE user who is not too convinced of the current 7.3 version).

    • Of course, he only evers goes after smaller fish, but doesn't dare trying the same with bigger companies (unfortunately, or he'd at last get his nose bloody).

      this is *not* true. He went against microsoft (with the "explorer" trademark) and won - well, at least MS settled out of court, supposedly paying quite a dime.
      He also went against heise (again "explorer") - and lost in the first trial ...
      Say what you want against him, but he doesn't fear big fishes.

  • Neither English nor German is my first language, so flames to /dev/null please...

    Gravenreuth versus Linux Distributor SuSE

    After Samba and kIllustrator, another Open Source program is keeping the lawyers busy. The lawyer Günter Frhr. v. Gravenreuth has obtained a preliminary injunction from the State Court in Munich against the German Linux distributor SuSE. The reason seems to be an Open Source program referenced (?) on the SuSE CD. Apparently Gravenreuth has had the court ban the firm from Nürnberg from further distributing its Linux distribution as long as the debated program name is included. This could lead to substantial financial loss for SuSE, if the already produced copies are no longer allowed to be sold.

    Frhr. v. Gravenreuth, when asked, confirmed he had obtained a preliminary injunction against the mark used by an Open Source software package. But he would not give further details, because his client would "come to an agreement with the opponent" and didn't want to be named. Christian Egle, press spokesman for SuSE, said that the firm would release a statement on the matter within the next few days.

  • Abmahnungen (Score:3, Informative)

    by wiredog ( 43288 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @09:16AM (#2803503) Journal
    From the earlier slashdot story [slashdot.org] on the Killustrator problems: Comment on the German system from a German [slashdot.org]
    • the thing is more complicated: abmahnungen can be issued by every company (workin in the same field). the process doesn't even have to include a lawyer. these "abmahnungen" were once created to provide a means for companies to settle their disputes out of court in a quick and cheap way. and then, the lawyers came in... read all about it on http://transpatent.com/leif/abmahn-faq.html [in german]

  • Human translation (Score:5, Informative)

    by mvdwege ( 243851 ) <mvdwege@mail.com> on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @09:31AM (#2803581) Homepage Journal

    Yeah I know, my German is not perfect (I'm Dutch), but those babelfish translations hurt.

    Gravenreuth vs. Linux distributor SuSE


    After Samba and KIllustrator yet another Open Source program is keeping lawyers busy. Lawyer Guenther Freiherr(1) von Gravenreuth has obtained a preliminary injunction against German Linux distributor SuSE from the Muenchen State Court. The reason seems to be an Open Source program referenced on a SuSE-CD. It appears(2) that Gravenreuth has had the court forbid further shipments of the Neuremberg company's Linux distribution, as long as the contested program's name is used in that. This could lead to substantial losses for SuSE if it can no longer ship the already produced copies.

    When asked, Freiherr von Gravenreuth confirmed to have obtained a preliminary injunction against the name(3) of an Open Source program. He declined to name further details because his client would want "to settle with the opposition" and did not want to be named. Christian Egle, press spokesman for SuSE GmbH, declared that his company would make its position known in the coming days.

    Notes:

    1. Freiherr: a title of minor nobility. Comparable to the English 'Sir'.
    2. The original had "Offenbar" which can be translated in a variety of ways. I think that "It appears" is best here.
    3. "Kennzeichnung" litteraly means "designation", or "distinguishing aspect". In context, "name" makes sense, but it is not the best translation.
    I did have to play a little with the sentence construction, but I think this will make sense.

    On a side note: Why does this bloody Windows (I'm at work) insist on raising the focused window? At home (Debian GNU/Linux) I could have left the original article on top and typed in the textbox simultaneously. Now I had to switch constantly. Grrr.

    Mart
    • To handle your side note, download and install PowerToys from M$ and change the setting. With my NT box at work, I can change focus w/o raising the window.
    • Don't worry, both KDE and Gnome are busy copying the click-raises-the-window "feature" so you can be just as annoyed with Linux as with Windows! It is very frustrating to see this, I like Linux because it is different and innovative, not because it is "not MicroSoft".

      Seriouisly, you can fix NT by editing a registry setting so it is point-to-type, which will work as long as you can navigate your cursor without clicking. There is NO way to prevent a click from raising the window, even if you write the program that owns the window!

      The KDE window manager (not Gnome yet) is getting really bad at assumming this. It is almost impossible to turn this off and still have a functioning window manager. This is really really sad.

  • Gravenreuth FAQ (Score:2, Informative)

    by Okneff ( 522357 )
    Here's a FAQ about lawyer Gravenreuth . http://www.klostermaier.de/fvg/faq.html

  • Gravenreuth against Linux-Distribution SuSE

    After Samba and kIllustrator there is another open-source-program which keeps the attorneys busy. The lawyer Günter Frhr. v. Gravenreuth has won a preliminary injunction at the Landgericht (court) in Munich against the German Linux distributor SuSE. The cause seems to be some open-source-software referenced on one of SuSE's CDs. Apparently Gravenreuth keeps the company from Nuremberg legally from delivering their Linux-distribution any further, as long as it contains the contoversial program name. This could bring a significant financial loss for SuSE if the already produced copies couldn't be sold any more.

    Mr. Gravenreuth confirmed on inquiry to be granted a preliminary injunction against the name of an open-source-software. But he didn't want to tell further details, since his client is going to aggree with the opponent and would like not to be mentioned. Christian Egle, press spokesman of SuSE, explained that his company would express itself on the matter in the next days.

  • It's about Krayon again ... Crayon sues, not Adobe (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @09:56AM (#2803737)
    From what I've heard from a source close to the action he sues SuSE (no pun intended) in the name of crayon [crayon.de], a company which just distributes some lame graphic sets.

    *sigh*
    • That can't be it. Wouldn't Crayola (sp?) have issues with that lawsuit. Crayon is a generic word in American English (I can't speak for other versions of te English language). That would be stupid if it is the real issue. This just reminds me why I dislike some lawyers.
      • thats irrelevand to our stuid legal system ;) Mr. Gravenreuth is also famous for filling injunctions about the word "Explorer" used in a computer-enviroment. Mind u .. M$ did "license" the name explorer in germany ;) aw .. what the joy of a good legal system ;)
      • > Wouldn't Crayola (sp?) have issues with that lawsuit.

        They probably wouldn't be able to sue, since they are in a different industry. Crayon is in the same industry (they sell computer graphic stuff) so their case is much stronger.

        Looking at the web site, though - the design is so plain, that it looks like the company has been setup solely for the purpose of this lawsuit. There is not a single decent graphic on their site - and that's what they claim to be selling...

        All their products are CDROMs with image collections. The actual company is "Software Service Seidel", the "Crayon Vertriebs GmbH" which is their subsidiary, was founded last summer. (see: "wir über uns" [crayon.de] )

      • yeh I can't see how someone could sue over the word crayon, its a generic word in English and many other languages
    • So assuming all these global laws [slashdot.org] and the tendancy for trademark and IP law to become more rather than less restrictive, do we run the risk of ordinary people being locked out of their language for fear of bringing on a trademark infringement? Will corporations finance thousands of nuisance law suits against smaller competitors with a view to drowning them?

      Xix.



  • That's one of the bad things about Open Source software in general: no fun with lawsuits!

    At least SuSe lucked out with offering commercial software. Just think of all those poor Debian saps who'll never see the court jesters.
  • When it comes to being a major public pain in the butt, Gravenreuth dwarves Gates and Balmer by far.

    This german guy is so f*cking full of sh*t, he's even a shame to the lawyers trade on this whole flippin' planet!
    From what I gather he needs bodyguards whenever he moves in public. Note that this is germany where violence in public is considerably more seldom than in the US. Anyhow, he'd better have them if I ever bumb into this creep.

  • mv /bin/offending_name /bin/to_hell_with_gravenreuth

    alias offending_name=to_hell_with_gravenreuth

    Of course, you should feel free to use classic four-letter Anglo-Saxon words in your implementation, should that better fit your mood. :-)

    • The file containing the alias would still be a violation.

      I just wonder how long it'll take before M$, Adobe or another EBC trademarks ls and forces everyone to use different commands.

      Since you can trademark a generic term and sue someone using a variation thereof (not even the same term, just like in this case), it shouldn't be too difficult to get trademarks on "l" and "d", and then sue the hell out of any two letter commands using either trademark.

  • Instead of babelfish, use google translation tools (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @10:20AM (#2803846) Homepage Journal
    Instead of being the typical automaton and use the fish, try the google language translators.
    Why?
    Cause you can directly link [google.com] to the translated page.
    Something Altavista doesn't like.
    • I am sooo glad computer translation sucks as bad as it does (I work as a translator, though not from German, that's why). Both the Google translator and Babelfish still fail to yield proper English texts instead of translated single words stuck together, even after years and years of research. This is not a complex article requiring in-depth knowledge of German customs and culture, mind you, it's a simple narration of facts.
  • I have question here: From an outsiders point of view these German "Abmahnungen" seem like a really bad idea as they can be abused by scum like this lawyer. Why do they still exist? I guess there is a real good reason but if it means that normal people making a tiny mistake in classified ads or hobby coders get fucked by gready selfserving lawyers, the possitive side would have to be large. I'm sorry if this is a simplistic view, I don't have the whole picture by a long way so I have to ask our German readers, what are the possitives and are people in Germany annoyed by the Abmahnungen lawyers picking on the little guy?

    • Re:Abmahnungen (Score:4, Interesting)

      by alhague ( 127665 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @12:00PM (#2804316)

      these German "Abmahnungen" seem like a really bad idea as they can be abused by scum like this lawyer.
      an idea that can be exploited is not necessarily a bad idea. Think of an idea just as a tool. Just because you can hurt someone with a hammer, a hammer is not a bad thing by design.

      Why do they still exist?
      An "Abmahnung" is intended to prevent a lawsuit. The idea behind it is, that company A shall be able to have a means against unfair competition done by company B without having to go to court and have a year-lasting lawsuit. At least that is what the means of "Abmahung" was developed for.
      The problem is, that german jurisdiction tends towards the attitude that any online activity can be interpreted as "taking part in brand competition" and therefore "Abmahnung" gets applied to virtually everyone in the same way, be he a hobbyist, an university, an OS-programmer or a company.

      -al
  • Doesn't Germany have some sort of public record for court transactions - unless there is a damn good reason, the records of plaintiff and defendant are a matter of public record? (Like most other countries?)

    I somehow doubt "potential bad press" would count as a good reason to prevent publication of court records.

    Since they've already been to court and had a preliminary injunction, that would mean that the plaintiff's name is a matter of public record, no?

    Couldn't someone in Munich find out some more info?

  • Translation from The Register (Score:3, Informative)

    by frank249 ( 100528 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @11:46AM (#2804261)
    A reader of The Register [theregister.co.uk] provides this translation:


    After Samba and kIllustrator, yet another open-source-program fillsthe pockets of lawyers. The [ill-reputed] German lawyer Günther Freiherr von Gravenreuth has won a preliminary injunction at the Munich District Court against the German Linux-distributor SuSE.

    The reason seems to be an open-source-software referenced on one of the SuSE-CDs. Apparently Gravenreuth has prohibited the Nurenberg based company from delivering its Linux-distribution,
    as long as the disputed program name is contained on the disks.

    SuSE could face serious financial losses if the copies already produced cannot be sold.

    Being asked, Freiherr von Gravenreuth confirms the preliminary injunction against the name of the open-source-software, but refuses to give any more details, since his client wishes to get a settlement with "the opponent" and doesn't want to be named.

    SuSE spokesman Christian Egle says his company will publish a statement in a few days.
  • I wonder why he chose SuSE rather than any other distro (they're the only ones whose key distinctive feature is non-Free - YaST)...

    But much as I despise the non-free nature of the distro, I do hope SuSE can stand up to this asshole.
    If the lawyer's not prepared either to name his "client" (yeah, right) or to tackle the package with a "conflicting" name at source, then he really has to be a dipshit, sorry, I mean "he deserves to lose in court".
    • lots of distro's ship with non-Free stuff.. debian is about the only one that makes it hard to get non-Free stuff.. and its relatively easy to change your apt get info to allow you to get non-Free stuff..
  • Heise [heise.de] reports in a follow-up article [heise.de]that Krayon [koffice.org] is the offending app. Seidel Softwareservice [seidel-online.de] own the rights for "Crayon" and thus claims too much similarity in the name.

    Incidently, as the article says, Krayon is not even included in SuSE 7.3, apart from a KDE-Menu entry. Krayon is unmaintained upstream and so not longer part of Koffice.

    The article finishes with the question whether Distributors will have to scan their packages for possible namespace clashes and in doing so, might abandon a loarge portion of free software that's not cleared.

    In a land where you can get sued for using the colour Magenta [telekom.de] anything can happen, I guess.

    Michael

  • the kIllustrator case should be a non-issue at this point, as it was renamed Kontour some time ago.



    Maybe it's time for SuSE to upgrade to the newest KDE-stable?

  • Update (Score:5, Informative)

    by Asic Eng ( 193332 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @04:05PM (#2805865)
    Well, here is an update [heise-online.de] to the story.

    Basically: it's about Krayon, which used to be part of the KOffice suite. The program is not actually on the SuSE CD, but there is a leftover entry in the KDE menu, labeled Krayon.

    Krayon is supposed to conflict with the "Crayon" trademark, which is held by Seidel Softwareservice [seidel-online.de].

    Gravenreuth the "lawyer" who wrote this Abmahnung stated that he's prepared to settle with SuSE.

    It's presumed that SuSE will want to settle, too.

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