Re: AMD k6 cosmetic problems (intel trademark)

docwhat@gerf.org ;The Doctor What ("docwhat@gerf.org)
Mon, 13 Oct 1997 09:52:20 -0700

Telephone Game! H. Peter Anvin said (on 11:39 PM 10/11/97 GMT):
->They couldn't trademark "386", or "486" because those are *NUMBERS*,
->and the court ruled you can't own a number. However, "IA32" is
->definitely *not* a number, and certainly could be trademarked.

->Besides, we've used "i386" as the name for this architecture since
->1991, much longer than the "IA32" moinker has been around.

Actually, i386 is trade marked. See:
http://www.intel.com/sites/corporate/tradmarx.htm

However, I don't see IA32 or IA-32 or IA-64 or any other derivatives on
their legalese page, so they either: a) don't have it trade marked or
b) don't update their legalese page often.

I doubt that INTEL is going to come after us, the linux community, for
using IA32 to describe kernels built for the Intel Architecture....

Caveat: I'm not a lawyer.
-=Doc

--
"Living for Today, or maybe even Yesterday" -- DeVo
The Doctor What: Guru of the Gods           http://www.gerf.org/~docwhat/
docwhat@gerf.org                    (finger docwhat@gerf.org for PGP key)
PGPkey Fingerprint: EA 4C 8C FC 5C F0 14 78  9C 02 B9 A1 83 54 7C 8D