[Fwd: [Fwd: Possible OWL trademark problem?]]

All,

Here is the reply I received about the MITRE OWL product. By the way, I
received another question: will the W3C attempt to copyright/trademark
the OWL name? What is standard practice?

Thanks,
Leo
-- 
_____________________________________________
Dr. Leo Obrst		The MITRE Corporation
mailto:lobrst@mitre.org Intelligent Information Management/Exploitation
Voice: 703-883-6770	7515 Colshire Drive, M/S W640
Fax: 703-883-1379       McLean, VA 22102-7508, USA

attached mail follows:

Leo,

As far as I am concerned, you are free to use the OWL acronym. I meant it to
stand for  
Organization-Wide Learning, although that term has a somewhat different meaning
in general use. In any case, I have refined my thinking and would now call what
I am doing Bootstrap Learning. 

Frank



Leo Obrst wrote:
> 
> Frank,
> 
> The W3C Web Ontology Working Group is thinking of calling the language
> we will develop OWL (Ontology Web Language), but we want to make sure we
> do not violate any copyrights, patents, etc. Your research as reported
> at http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/vol_1_2000/linton.html uses the name
> OWL.
> 
> Do you know if there are any restrictions on the use of this name? Would
> you mind if we use it?
> 
> I am cc-ing Bede McCall on this message, because he is MITRE's main
> representative to the W3C consortium. And both Marwan Sabbouh and I are
> members of the WOW-G.
> 
> Thanks for any info!
> Leo
> --
> _____________________________________________
> Dr. Leo Obrst           The MITRE Corporation
> mailto:lobrst@mitre.org Intelligent Information Management/Exploitation
> Voice: 703-883-6770     7515 Colshire Drive, M/S W640
> Fax: 703-883-1379       McLean, VA 22102-7508, USA
> 
>   --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Subject: Re: Possible OWL trademark problem?
> Resent-Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 13:58:25 -0500 (EST)
> Resent-From: www-webont-wg@w3.org
> Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 11:02:32 -0800
> From: Deborah McGuinness <dlm@ksl.stanford.edu>
> Organization: Knowledge Systems Lab Stanford University
> To: nmg@ecs.soton.ac.uk
> CC: www-webont-wg@w3.org
> References: <15432.24380.816352.3323@localhost.localdomain>
> 
> Interesting - ontology works has one of jim's past students or collaborators in
> it - bill anderson.
> jim - maybe you can ask bill if we need to get permission for the use of the
> name owl from them.
> 
> i also found another owl system:
> http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/vol_1_2000/linton.html
> an AI knowledge capture and instruction system developed at mitre - it stands
> for organization wide learning but if we care about copyrights or trademarks
> and mitre has done either, it is probably close enough to matter.
> 
> Deborah
> 
> Nick Gibbins wrote:
> 
> > One of my work colleagues came across the website for a company called
> > Ontology Works Inc. [1] who appear to be claiming a trademark on
> > "Ontology Works Language" (and possibly also the acronym "OWL"), as
> > used in a white paper on their site[2].
> >
> > I've not been able to find either on the USPTO's public search
> > facility (so they're probably not registered or pending
> > registration). Is this something that this WG needs to be aware of?
> >
> > [1]  http://www.ontologyworks.com/
> > [2]  http://www.ontologyworks.com/whitepaper.pdf
> >
> > --
> > Nick Gibbins                                            nmg@ecs.soton.ac.uk
> > Advanced Knowledge Technologies                    tel: +44 (0) 23 80592831
> > University of Southampton                          fax: +44 (0) 23 80592865
> 
> --
>  Deborah L. McGuinness
>  Knowledge Systems Laboratory
>  Gates Computer Science Building, 2A Room 241
>  Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-9020
>  email: dlm@ksl.stanford.edu
>  URL: http://ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm
>  (voice) 650 723 9770    (stanford fax) 650 725 5850   (computer fax)  801 705
> 0941