Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 11:50:52 +0000 (UTC) From: H. <musicboxnopsamrider.co.uk> Subject: Re: Why SAAB 93 !
>If by "right to" you mean, "legal right to", I think you may be wrong. >You cannot copyright numbers, AFAIK, since they are not an original >work. If, OTOH, you mean "they got there first so other manufacturers >stay away from those numbers", I'd agree. However, combined with the >manufacturer's name, the model number is copyright-able. So, Saab >could produce a "Saab 911", and there is no copyright violation. >However, Porsche would likely sue for other reasons if it was remotely >similar to their car. This was in court not so long ago - the most famous case being that of Intel versus AMD - Intel wanted sole rights to 486, 586, x86 etc, but couldn't copyright them, and as such then came up with the name Pentium, which as a word, was liable to copyright. A further example of word copyright is TDI, as used by Audi and VW. They copyrighted that about four or five years ago, and thus other manufacturers could no longer use it, hence Ford haveing TDCi and Saab using TiD.