I appreciate Ryan taking this up, and the updates are interesting.<p>Obviously I'm not paying for the lawyers but it feels like "oh Oracle is trying to add months of delays" feels pretty normal. Only months! If the process just trudges along for a couple of years before reaching a "good" conclusion, still worth doing!<p>And very happy that this is an actual legal proceeding and "try to sign a petition asking Oracle nicely" is no longer what is being looked at. It's Oracle!<p>Imagine how far along ago we would be[0] if 2 years ago the lawyers started getting involved. Sometimes you just gotta do the thing that takes forever. Or at least try in parallel?<p>[0]: Again, I'm not paying for the lawyers or doing anything useful at all!
The best part of this article for me was seeing that Oracle's screenshots were taken in IE.<p>Yes, those are old by now, but it's still a blast from the past.
The legal system is fundamentally broken, globally.<p>Last time I tried to start a legal action to claim damages against a big company for a very clear-cut case full of obvious fraud and deception (with plenty of evidence and many witnesses). I couldn't find a single lawyer willing to take my case for a share of the proceeds. The defendant was sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in questionably-obtained cash and assets. To me, this is proof that the legal system is broken. It means the lawyers knew that the odds of winning were extremely low, regardless of the evidence.<p>I told them about the large amounts of money involved and told them my situation; many of them didn't even ask about what evidence I had. That's how unlikely it is to win a legal case for a non-corporate entity; lawyers won't even lift a finger about a case involving millions and literal fraud if the plaintiff doesn't have the right status, exposure or business connections.<p>If this is how they deal with the creator of Node.js with the support of Brendan Eich (who literally invented JavaScript), then imagine how they deal with the rest of us who aren't high-exposure individuals.<p>What's the point of even having a legal system if it only works for certain people?
I'm sympathetic to the points being made but the argument that Oracle does not have its own JavaScript runtime does not hold.
An OracleBD is able to execute triggers written in JavaScript since quite some time.<p>see <a href="https://blogs.oracle.com/java/post/multilingual-engine-executing-javascript-in-oracle%C2%A0database" rel="nofollow">https://blogs.oracle.com/java/post/multilingual-engine-execu...</a>
I'm glad this is being fought, Oracle is a demon.<p>> The major implementations of JavaScript are in the browsers built by Mozilla, Google, Apple, and Microsoft<p>Isn't MS's browser just Chromium? Weird to add them to the list when they don't build a browser any more. Why not add Brave, etc?
Netscape wanted to call their new language "JavaScript" to piggy-back off the popularity of Java. Sun Microsystems owned Java(tm), and allowed Netscape to use the name while retaining the trademark. Netscape was purchased by AOL and then terminated. Oracle purchased Sun and all things Java, including the JavaScript trademark. Sun and Oracle have never done anything significant in the JavaScript world, but retain the trademark because of the Java name.<p>Since literally no one associates JavaScript with Oracle, unless aware of the name history and company acquisition history, it isn't a valid identifier of the source of "JavaScript", and should be canceled or transferred to an organization like EcmaScript International.
Just call it ECMAScript and forget about "Java".<p>"JavaScript" was not a good choice of name to begin with. The original JavaScript did not have much in common with Java.
To avoid "trade mark infringement" all the JS runtime owners could just make theirs not work on any oracle app or domain with a big annoying message about the case.
Hear me out: the web / oss community could absolutely band together and rebrand JavaScript. Could be: LiveScript, WebScript, etc.<p>There would be good support and we could do it fairly swiftly. To hell with Oracle.
I say what I said to the last Oracle salesmen who visited me: “when your legal teams drives more revenue that your sales team, you know your company is deader than Larry Ellisons dick”
Just under 30 years ago, when I was starting my IT studies, I had an older colleague who was a great authority to me. When I began learning about RDBMS options, I called him to ask, „What do you think about Oracle?”. He just shouted, „Total crap!!!” and that was enough for me. Since then, to this day, I’ve never touched Oracle.
This response is just saying that "no we didn't fraudulently submit the node.js site, it's just (hand-waving)".<p>They also state that they expect to win on the generic-ness aspect of the suit at trial with the relevant audience (hah).<p>Most likely we'll see Oracle send out C&Ds to uses of Javascript without the (tm) Oracle for a few months before a trial starts. Whether that will be enough to convince a judge and/or jury that they haven't abandoned the trademark is another question.
On the fraud issue, while it's infuriating, I don't think you have standing to allege the actual issue.<p>The issue is statement 17 of your filing is factually incorrect, as Oracle details in their motion to dismiss. The form, without that specimen, is still valid; the most the court could do is to strike that image from the record and everything else would remain unchanged.<p>I'm not a lawyer, but from what I understand, you need standing to proceed with a claim. Standing here means that you were harmed or affected by the claim, and are seeking relief (i.e. asking the court to do/order something for you). The problem here, as Oracle points out, is that you were not harmed by the misrepresentation of the specimen. The USPTO was harmed by the misrepresentation, not you.<p>A way around this issue would be if the USPTO delegated its authority to bring-misrepresentation-concerns to any applicant willing to pay the court costs. You'd have to check if any law delegated that authority (for judicial action), or if there's a separate form, process, or procedure used to handle the delegation (outside of judicial action).<p>A similar example of this in action is EPA violations; for many cases, no individual has standing to bring the court action needed to address the harm being done. So the EPA was given that standing by law. Then the EPA delegates that authority as needed, or acts on its own.<p>I think you should drop this claim and continue with the others, and look into how USPTO handles immaterial but knowingly-false information. They probably have some mechanism, so that people don't just... throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.
> So last November, I filed a formal petition with the USPTO through my company, Deno, to cancel Oracle’s “JavaScript” trademark. Among other things, we pointed out that in 2019, Oracle renewed its trademark by submitting a screenshot of the Node.js website—a project I created—as proof of use, despite having no affiliation with it.<p>Clown world. We go about thinking our legal system might have some flaws but generally "works"
I hope this is good marketing for Deno and not just a huge distraction. I feel like Bun is running circles around them right now. I feel like there might even be room for 3 winners (Bun, Deno, Node) but I don't understand the point of this.<p>If Deno wins this battle will that make we want use Deno more?
Imagine you start a new OSS RDBMS project. To help drive adoption you license a trademark from Oracle and call it "OracleBase", even though it has nothing much in common with the well known Oracle database other than also being an RDBMS.<p>Despite not being objectively better than competitors OracleBase is wildly successful and basically takes over the OSS RDBMS space. Multiple other projects and vendors are building on your specs. A popular and extensive ecosystem develops around it. Many peoples careers are invested in its growth and success.<p>One day you wake up in a cold sweat, suddenly remembering that the old trademark you licensed years ago is still there, pointed at your cathedral like a nuclear missile, with Larry Ellison's finger on the trigger.
I've always been fascinated by Larry Ellison ever since I read his biography (God something something).<p>What's insane is how much of the culture he controls. In tech and outside. He's about to own the largest entertainment company, he owns some of the best real estate in the world, and he owns MySQL and Java.<p>Genius (or maybe evil genius).
1. Is anyone paying Oracle for this trademark? I ask because lawyers aren’t underpants gnomes; if there is not a revenue stream then what supports their effort?<p>2. The below quote from the article has a poignant innocence to it. Not as unhinged as Mullenwrg but still as deluded.<p><i>I created Node.js and released it under the MIT license to benefit developers, not so it could be used as a legal pawn by a Fortune 500 company. Now, instead of correcting their misrepresentation, they’re using it to stall the case.</i>
Is ,,Oracle not controlling JavaScript'' really a good argument?<p>Who wants Oracle to start controlling it?<p>We're mostly better off leaving it a gray area maybe until Oracle gets more aggressive with it.
Maybe I’m missing something…<p>I get it that Oracle is in the wrong but I’m still not sure why get in this trademark fight anyhow.<p>I would personally leave it to someone with much larger pockets like Microsoft to deal with.
Please don't back out of this... oracle needs to be slapped down for every piece of software that they've bought (or scammed/stolen) and abused with neglect and hoarding, and trying to milk every dollar out of things they never created.