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by mrtksn 928 days ago
This is like when city of Batman in Turkey requested royalties from Warner Bros for using the name Batman.

Also, it's like when the country Iceland suing Iceland supermarkets chain, which is an ongoing dispute.

3 comments

I think the Apache name is also an ongoing dispute by the Apache nation (the actual people) vs the Apache Software Foundation.
IIRC, it was named that for being a patchy system, though?
Yes, it was called A patchy server initially, and then that was made into a wordplay on the term Apache, and they used a colourful feather as a logo.

There is also sn interesting anecdote about Apache devs, IBM and open source.

Has the Apache Nation had a dispute with the ASF? Or just some activism group?

Not that it matters, really. The all-girls' Catholic school, Ursuline Academy of New Orleans, has a sorority system based on year of graduation. The classes/sororities were called Skips (Skipperettes), Macs (Merry Macs), Sioux, and Leps (Leprechauns). The school sought, and received, permission from the Sioux Nation to use the Sioux name. Despite this, after Black Lives Matter happened there was a nationwide reexamination of whiteness's impact on our culture, particularly with regard to cultural appropriation, and the decision was made to change the name of the Sioux class to Phoenixes (or Nix for short). So the Apache Software Foundation probably won't be named such for much longer.

The Iceland v Iceland Foods debacle was at least a bit more understandable- the country wasn't particularly happy with the trademark, but took the matter to court after the food company "sought in 2016 to prevent various Icelandic producers from using the word ‘Iceland’ to describe their goods."

https://trademarklawyermagazine.com/the-cold-never-bothered-...

From the Wikipedia, 'The dispute arose once more when the supermarket tried to stop the trademark "Inspired by Iceland" from being branded on Icelandic groceries in 2015.' That seems cheeky, to put it mildly…

Fortunately, it seems the country essentially won their case in December 2022 and the EU trademark has been cancelled. (“The monopolisation of a country name cannot lead to the inequitable situation in which traders with real and genuine connection to a certain geographic location are forced to constantly ‘look over their shoulder’ when referring to the real geographical origin of goods and service,” the summary documents say.)