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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jonny Nexus" data-source="post: 1325689" data-attributes="member: 14664">Well if Adobe lost the trademark then there would be no risk whatsoever in anyone producting a photoshop package, just as there is no risk in anyone producing a spreadsheet package. So you might have say Adobe Photoshop, Borland Photoshop and Microsoft Photoshop.And who's to say that Microsoft couldn't leverage their monopoly position to make sure that their photoshop obliterated the Adobe one?The (perhaps slightly twisted) logic of the trademark authorities is this:You can't trademark a word. You can only trademark a name. A name can be an abstract sound, or something that is a word but is being used in a completely abstract concept.So:"Blabbagey" as a trademark for a brand of radio would be okay."Pencil" as a trademark for a brand of radio would be okay."Pencil" as a trademark for a wooden writing stick with a graphite core WOULD NOT BE OKAY.So, if Photoshop is just an abstract name that Adobe call their paint package then it's okay. *But* if photoshop is (or becomes) the word used to describe a type of software (like spreadsheet, database, word processor etc) then Adobe have no right to trademark it and say that only they can make a "photoshop".It would be like Microsoft trademarking the word "spreadsheet" (to describe a spreadsheet - if they wanted to trademark it as a brand of sportswear that would be fine) and then saying that no-one else could sell a spreadsheet package (or they could, but they couldn't describe it as a spreadsheet).</blockquote>

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