And now (believe it or not) Linux track lighting!

[hazel]

I went into a lighting shop today to buy a new low-energy globe bulb and saw in one of their catalogues "Linux Light Silver-Grey Track". Greatly intrigued, I looked it up on the web and found that there is actually a company that uses "Linux" as the name of one of their products. If you don't believe it, here's the link.

Now I was under the impression that Linux is a registered trademark owned by Linus Torvald. Don't you think something ought to be done about this? I mean people might think they were getting lighting with some kind of built-in open-source controlling program.

[rokytnji]

I'll believe anything when it comes to free enterprise and capitalism. Don't know if Linux is a trade mark name though. I run into the same thing when I search google images for AntiX images and what shows up is mostly sunglasses.

[oz]

I believe Linus Torvalds holds the trademark for Linux:

Linux Trademark Institute | The Linux Foundation

Some of the info found there might shed some light (pun intended) on it. They also have an ABUSE button that can be used, if needed.

[hazel]

They talk there about "software-related products and services", which reminded me that trademarks are usually domain-specific. For example, the Beatles' Apple trademark and that of Apple Computers did not clash until the latter went into the music-publishing business with iTunes. Then the rocket went up.

I suspect that legally this overlap is OK because it probably wouldn't cause confusion in anyone's mind. Except mine perhaps.