Oracle Will Not Voluntarily Withdraw JavaScript Trademark

[p4ul]

"Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison." [1].

[1.] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s

[nayuki]

> And by the way, and I've already fallen into this trap here, do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. Because if you--you need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawn mower. Lawnmower just does, like, mows the lawn. Like, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think like, oh the lawnmower hates me, lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Lawnmower--you don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower, don't fall into that trap about Oracle.

> So, and in particular with open source, oh they wanted to kill OpenSolaris, like no, the lawnmower doesn't care about OpenSolaris. The lawnmower doesn't think about OpenSolaris, the lawnmower can't care about OpenSolaris. The lawnmower can't have empathy.

(I listened to the speech and manually cleaned up YouTube's automatic transcription.)

[indrora]

"ORACLE: (n, abbr, nonstd.) One Rich Asshole called Larry Ellison."

[mbreese]

I expect that this was the predicted outcome? And that all we are seeing here is the beginning of the process, rather than the end?

On the face of it, JavaScript seems like a pretty solid trademark. But, to me, it’s really not clear how much control Oracle has asserted over it…

[mananaysiempre]

(Not a lawyer.) To have rights to a trademark, you have to use it in, well, trade. It’s not enough for a term to refer to a specific thing in normal usage, you must have a widely recognized claim on that thing. It should be in the customer’s interest that your thing not be confusable with thing-alikes that others may offer, specifically by having an exclusive right to be sold as the thing. And Oracle demonstrably does not deal in “JavaScript” any more than many many other companies and individuals do.

[pdpi]

> On the face of it, JavaScript seems like a pretty solid trademark.

It seems to me that it's the exact opposite of that: It's been so thoroughly genericised that it might as well not exist as a trademark. Also, I couldn't even tell you of a single product Oracle sells that uses the mark.

[thayne]

Is Oracle wasting people's time and money (including their own) just for the fun of it? I don't see any practical reason to fight this.

[12_throw_away]

> Is Oracle wasting people's time and money (including their own) just for the fun of it?

No, as "fun" is a human concept. Don't fall into that trap [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42630410

[dangus]

https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts

[timw4mail]

Oracle's gonna Oracle

[theanonymousone]

In previous threads related to this topic, someone proposed just abandoning JavaScript and calling it simply JS.

This seems a brilliant solution for multiple reasons, arguably even better than Oracle withdrawal of the trademark (which will still leave us with the car vs. carpet problem).

[trademark_]

They must have read this counterpoint: https://mastodon.social/@trademark_/113732902163918914

[thayne]

> Yet, few of the millions who program in it realize they have much better choices

Oh, if only that were true. I wish there were better choices for web development. And no, transpiling another language to JavaScript doesn't count.

[exabrial]

In my opinion, poking the sleeping fat bear is a dumb move, and a waste of money that is better spent funding individual contributors to important projects.

The worst case is unbelievably bad: they start asserting it. I would leave the status quo as-is and go find other hobbies. Besides, the longer it goes on without a battle, the better the case is to revoke it. It's infinitely better to let the status quo ride.

[phkahler]

And Apache will not give up Open Office or kill the "project".

[TiredOfLife]

At least with Oracle it is expected.

[mproud]

Are they claiming that since they own the Java trademark that they can own the JavaScript trademark?

[gnabgib]

They own the JavaScript trademark, and Dahl/Deno were trying to get it released:

Deno vs. Oracle: Canceling the JavaScript Trademark (185 points, 1 month ago, 27 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42239263

Oracle files notice of appearance for JavaScript trademark [pdf] (107 points, 1 month ago, 84 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42323158

Oracle, it's time to free JavaScript (277 points, 3 months ago, 127 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41557383

JavaScript is a trademark owned by Oracle (157 points, 10 years ago, 82 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8344049

[marcus0x62]

No, Sun trademarked JavaScript in the late 90s. Oracle acquired the trademark when they acquired Sun. Netscape - as you may know - originally called JavaScript LiveScript, but changed it to JavaScript, at least partially to ride the Java hype train. Sun retained the IP related to the name.

[worik]

What are the grounds for invalidating the trademark?

> we’ll start discovery to show how "JavaScript" is widely recognized as a generic term

But "JavaScript" is always referring to the same thing, it is not a term for "in browser scripting". Am I missing something?

[gary_0]

Whenever anyone says "JavaScript" they actually mean "ECMAScript", which is the language browsers and scripting engines actually implement. The Web standard documents cannot use the term "JavaScript" because of the trademark issue.

There isn't even such a thing as "Oracle JavaScript", they are sitting on the trademark without using it.

[pyuser583]

It’s being filed by the creator Node.js, so I don’t think “in browser scripting” is the proper category.

The grounds are non-use. Oracle doesn’t actually offer a “JavaScript” product.

[thayne]

JavaScript can refer to the standard specification of ECMAScript, as well as the many implementations notably including v8 (chromium, node, deno), JavaScriptCore (webkit), and spidermonkey (Firefox), as well as some lesser known ones like duktape and QuickJS. And it can also be used to refer to an ECMAScript implementation plus an additional runtime platform like the Web API, or something like node or deno.

And Oracle doesn't control any of that. The only thing I know of that Oracle has related to JavaScript is Graal.js, which is just yet another implementation of ECMAScript, and didn't even exist for most of the time Sun and Oracle held the trademark.

[cosmotic]

JavaScript can refer to many different similar languages, the runtimes, the standard library, etc.

People using JavaScript without getting permission are potentially infringing on Oracle's trademark. Many companies with trademarks tenaciously defend the trademark to protect it from being revoked. This doesn't appear to be the case with JavaScript. After usage becomes widespread, a company risks losing their trademark because they did not actively enforce the use of the trademark.

This video explains it from Velcro's perspective https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRi8LptvFZY

[duskwuff]

> What are the grounds for invalidating the trademark?

https://deno.com/blog/deno-v-oracle

TL;DR: Oracle has failed to defend the trademark, or even to use it in trade.

[fortran77]

What's wrong with everyone else calling it "ECMAScript?"

[aperrien]

While descriptive, I'd think a catchier name might be in order. As a plus, that can be used to draw people away from any Oracle branding.

[sgammon]

Sounds like GraalVM counts and Oracle intends to argue on that basis.

[ilrwbwrkhv]

Why not just kill JavaScript during this opportunity?

[butz]

Let's call it OracleScript and trademark it.

[Alifatisk]

Doesn’t that conflict with Oracles brand?

[coding123]

Isn't the entire point of the term ecmascript created to resolve this?

[calibas]

It prevents Oracle from suing, but everybody calls it JavaScript anyway...

[fzzzy]

Brendan Eich always used to say that ecmascript sounds like a skin disease.

[paxys]

Ecmascript was coined by ECMA International when they published the JS standard just to cover their ass and not get sued by Sun. It was never intended to be a name for the language, and has never been treated as such.