UNIX trademark registration

[Andrew Klossner]

[]
	"All the semi-official stuff I have seen from AT&T say that
	"UNIX is an unregistered trademark of AT&T..." . What exactly
	do they mean by "unregistered"? I have seen several times the
	statement that it is inappropriate to use the (T) symbol in
	connection with "UNIX" and yet I have seen AT&T ads which use
	this symbol.

	"Does the fact that "UNIX" is "unregistered" mean "well guys,
	we'd really appreciate it if you don't use this word
	inappropriately, but we havn't registered it so we can't really
	do a thing about it ..." or does "unregistered" have some
	obscure meaning to American lawyers."

In the U.S., you get trademark protection by simply using the trademark
on a product; you don't have to register it.  Registered trademarks are
followed by a superscript letter 'R' in a circle, and unregistered
trademarks are followed by superscript letters 'TM', not in a circle.
To register a trademark, you pay a fee and file it with an bureau in
Washington D.C.; this affords you a more solid claim if you ever have
to go to court over a trademark violation.  This is usually only done
by companies with enough legal resources to file such a suit, but that
certainly would include AT&T.

I'm just guessing now, but I speculate that the trademark might
originally have gone unregistered because AT&T, a legal monopoly, was
forbidden by law to offer non-telecommunications products in the
market.  And perhaps there's some legal problem with registering a
widely-used unregistered trademark.

	"Surely a name must be registered before it can be subject to
	international copyright agreements (I live in Australia)."

In the U.S., trademark protection is completely independent from
copyright protection.  And, in fact, the AT&T Unix(tm) brand operating
system is not protected by copyright in the U.S.; trade secret
protection is used instead.

  -- Andrew Klossner   (decvax!tektronix!orca!andrew)       [UUCP]
                       (orca!andrew.tektronix at csnet-relay)  [ARPA]