Rendezvous Renamed to OpenTalk

Gogo Dodo writes "Back in August, Slashdot covered Tibco suing Apple over the Rendezvous trademark. AppleInsider now reports that the lawsuit has been settled and Rendezvous' new name will be OpenTalk." Meanwhile Zeroconf sits in the corner and cries.

Re:OpenTalk?

[AKnightCowboy]

Maybe the FSF or someone in that league should try to trademark Open* names and reserve them for Open programs? Or will it be OpenSource like the name hints at?

Since when has Open* meant something was open source? Ever use OpenWindows? Adding Open in front of everything trying to indicate it's free software is a relatively new manifestation. I doubt the FSF cares since they prefer to use the term free.

Re:OpenTalk?

[Nakito]

Maybe the FSF or someone in that league should try to trademark Open* names and reserve them for Open programs?

Under USPTO regulations, I do not believe that you are allowed to "reserve" trademark names. I believe that you can only trademark names that you are actually using in active commerce or that you are actively preparing to launch in commerce. This is probably a good thing, because otherwise it would be like the situation with domain names -- people registering hundreds or thousands of names that they have no intention of ever using on the hope that they will pre-empt somone else's usage, and then extort a payoff.

Confusing?

[pldms]

Given that the issue was that there were two things called 'rendezvous' the statement:

Rendezvous' new name will be OpenTalk

doesn't really help :-)

Re:Fianlly - a name that makes sense

[arkanes]

If you're an english speaker and you don't know the word "rendezvous" then you DESERVE to feel like in idiot. It's not a made up word, or even technical. It's in the dictionary. And not just the OED, it's in every 2 dollar cheapo Merriam-Webster dictionary that you got from a used bookstore in high school and you still keep around. What the hell is wrong with people?

Doesn't Apple . .

[aarku]

google these things before they settle on a name? Tibco's Rendevous has been around for a while. It takes 5 seconds and saves big headaches later . . .

Stop stealing Generic names

[bstadil]

Trademarking a generic name like Windows is stealing from the Commons.

It does not get any better stealing from foreigners in this case the French.

How wouild you all feel if a French company decided to Trademark Meeting it's laughable.

Re:In Other News...

[American AC in Paris]

TIBCO Rendezvous is not a networking protocol. It's an enterprise-scale messaging system. Pretty much the only thing it has in common with Apple's Rendezvous is that they're both software and they both use the network.

To be honest, anybody who is genuinely in the market for TIBCO's Rendezvous is not going to confuse it with Apple's Rendezvous.

Think of Apple Rendezvous as a 4-door luxury sedan and TIBCO Rendezvous as a 150 ton mining truck. Yeah, they're both vehicles with four wheels, but you'd have to be an idiot to confuse the two, even if they share the same name. What's more, it's the mining truck company doing the suing--is it really plausible that customers for such a specialized product are going to confuse the heavy-duty industrial solution with the Joe Everyman one?

Re:Slashdot to be renamed AppleDot?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

When other tech companies start doing as much stuff worth noticing as Apple does, let us know.

Re:Fianlly - a name that makes sense

[sootman]

OpenTalk says even *less* than Rendezvous! Look at the definition:

1 A meeting at a prearranged time and place. See Synonyms at engagement.
2 A prearranged meeting place, especially an assembly point for troops or ships.
3 A popular gathering place: The café is a favorite rendezvous for artists.
4 Aerospace. The process of bringing two spacecraft together.

All have something to do with getting together ("connecting") in a certain geographic proximity. Since people on the same subnet (where Rendezvous works) tend to be physically close, the name is PERFECT!

OpenTalk just sounds like, well, some kind of open communication thing. Who is communicating with whom? How are they communicating? What makes this method different from all the others? OpenTalk is as worthless a name as OpenTransport or a thousand other bland CamelCase words. Hell, at least AppleTalk let you know *something* about the intended use--it was for Apples.

Re:More lawsuits to come

[b-baggins]

~= is enough to make or break a patent lawsuit. If the patent says web based, and Apple shows theirs is not, that may be all it takes.