FIRST's patents

[Roger]

Originally Posted by tanmaker

So does this mean we have to use a little ™ whenever we say gracious professionalism (™) or coopertition (™)?

I wandered thru wikipedia finding an answer to this, but my brain is a little foggy right now. I was thinking it's more like coopertition® as it is a registered trademark now, not just trademarked, but a patent isn't a trademark, right?

Patents are for ideas or methods -- an invention -- that may or may not turn into a product. Trademarks are for names that a product is traded by. Both in the US are done by the same people, the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Other people above I think have the right track on this. FIRST wants to hold onto the phrases "gracious professionalism" and "coopertition" by patenting it, not to prevent others from using it, but to prevent another party from registering it and requiring FIRST or whomever to pay usage fees. Sort of like me racing to the USPTO to get "Big Mac" registered in my name before MacDonalds thought to register it. I could be wrong about this, but it was my first thought.

My favorite "trade name" story was way back in the 80s when they came out with the auto named "mpg" that naturally had some fantastic miles per gallon -- back then this was new. MPG, a group that also goes under the name Maine Potato Growers, were not pleased that someone took their name.