Celestia Forums

Has anyone seen this yet?

http://www.rssd.esa.int/index.php?project=HIPPARCOS&page=Celestia2000

LordFerret wrote:Has anyone seen this yet?

http://www.rssd.esa.int/index.php?project=HIPPARCOS&page=Celestia2000

I thought Chris has the Copyright for the name "Celestia"?

Bye Fridger

I have to assume that Fridger is joking

Celestia 2000 came out quite a while before "our" Celestia.

selden wrote:I have to assume that Fridger is joking

Celestia 2000 came out quite a while before "our" Celestia.

OK then ESA has the Copyright on the name "Celestia"... Isn't that worse?

Bye Fridger

Fridger,

I don't know if you're being serious or jocular.

You can't copyright names, you copyright documents.
In the U.S., proper names have to be registered as trademarks in order to be protected against use by someone else. I don't know how it's handled in other countries.

selden wrote:Fridger,

I don't know if you're being serious or jocular.

You can't copyright names, you copyright documents.
In the U.S., proper names have to be registered as trademarks in order to be protected against use by someone else. I don't know how it's handled in other countries.

Since I have vacations, I am certainly more jocular than serious...

Still, from where do you know that Celestia has not been registered as a trademark by ESA? In Germany, we have an inondation of law cases because someone has accidentally chosen a name for his product (whatever it may be) that was already "assigned" to something else in some more or less formal manner (I suppose)...

Also I am somewhat disappointed, since so far I believed that "Celestia" was Chris' ORIGINAL idea... Now you tell me that one can just come along and steel a nice name as long as it is not a trademark? Hmmm...bad moral

Bye Fridger

Well, the ESA's Hipparcos software product is "Celestia 2000" not "Celestia".

Yes, people do like to make use of names which have become well known for some reason. Trademarking a product name in one field of endeavor does not prevent it from being used by someone else for something quite different. VAX, for example is a trademarked DEC computer designation (currently owned by HP) as well as a trademarked vacuum cleaner designation in the UK. (http://www.vax.co.uk)

I'm sure that everyone must be aware of the historical battles over trademarking the word "APPLE": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corp ... e_Computer

and given the following ruling: http://www.ladas.com/BULLETINS/1995/049 ... emark.html
isn't it time that Chris trademarked the color black!

I thought this was something recent. Looking around a bit more, I find the program has existed since (at least) 1998. Sorry for the fuss.