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Subject:Did Microsoft really copyright "Wizard"? From:"Mark L. Levinson" <mark -at- MEMCO -dot- CO -dot- IL> Date:Fri, 13 Mar 1998 14:12:30 +0200
Can somebody cite the source for the news that Microsoft
copyrighted the word "Wizard"?
First of all, I don't think you can copyright an isolated word
that is not your own invention. You can trademark it, if you
invent a connection between it and a product that it wouldn't
otherwise describe. So maybe Microsoft trademarked the word
"Wizard" as a description of a kind of interactive software.
But if that were the case, then whether and how the word "wizard"
is capitalized would not be an issue. If you use a word that
differs only in capitalization from a trademark, you're still
infringing the trademark. Maybe what Microsoft trademarked was
some graphical representation of the word "Wizard"? (The way
IBM trademarked the striped letters of its corporate identity?)
Anyway, I downloaded the list of trademarks from Microsoft's
website and Wizard isn't on it. TipWizard is. As of this
writing, the latest update of the list was January.
I tried to check Microsoft's list of product names, too.
(That's products.doc.) But it's evidently a Word 97 document
and even the standard converter won't make it readable on my
Word 7...
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- Mark L. Levinson - Memco Software - Wallenberg 24 - 69719 Tel Aviv
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