[SciPy-dev] Please vote on the names

[Perry Greenfield]

On Jan 3, 2006, at 10:08 PM, Fonnesbeck, Chris wrote:

> On 1/3/06 9:59 PM, "Andrew Straw" <strawman at astraw.com> wrote:
>
>> Do names like "numerics" or "numeriks" open us up to cease-and-desist
>> letters with anything more than empty-threat status from someone who
>> owns a trademark on "numerix"?
>
> According to my wife (a pretty good lawyer), they are close enough as 
> to be
> confusing for a potential consumer (recall Lindows), so they should be
> avoided.
>
To belabor what is almost certainly a moot point now, I doubt that a 
generic
term like numerics could be argued to be a trademark violation of a 
alternate
spelling of that term. I even wonder if use of numerix is a problem 
here since
confusion doesn't seem likely; one is the name of a company and the 
other the
name of a free software package. There is obviously no attempt to 
leverage off
of their market or awareness of their name. Despite that there 
certainly seems
to be a risk in that no one wants to have to argue the point in court 
even if
it seems baseless. Probably the company's biggest concern is that 
google might
show our numerix over theirs at some point detracting from their 
visibility.

Perry