Thomas We are spending too much time on this but your quoting of Webbink (the name alone makes me suspicious) flies in the face of reality.
For Heaven's sake, why? This is Red Hat, people, not Microsoft. You remember, the company that has *given* away operating systems since, what, 1994? Webbink is Red Hat's counsel. He represents Red Hat. He has said publicly that Red Hat has no intention of bothering the Cornell/UVA people. There is absolutely no reason to do so - the product lines could not be confused in any meaningful way. It would do Red Hat serious harm in the eyes of the community if they did, and there is really no way that the Cornell/UVA people could do anything to cause Red Hat to even look at them funny unless they started up a Linux distro.
Fairely often a large corporation sues a smaller store or company for using not only the exactly same name that they have trademarked but for a name that is a pun on their name.
If they are competitors, yes I can see that. I remember the whole Mike Rowe lawsuit (mikerowesoft.com), too. But in that case, it was 1) Microsoft and 2) pretty obvious that it was an intentional play on Microsoft and Mike Rowe was actually competing - he was selling development services and Microsoft sells development services. In this case (Cornell/UVA's F.E.D.O.R.A. project versus Red Hat's Fedora Project), there is no such competition.
If Cornell/UVA were not also marketing software I would be more sympathetic that the trademarking could not affect Cornell/UVA.
I can certainly understand your point of view, but seriously - what on Earth would Red Hat gain by jacking with the Cornell/UVA project? There is no competition, they are in different areas of technology.
Thomas
