Thanks, Carl, for your response. It led to me doing some research on this,
and a better understanding.
From my reading, the "use it or lose it" aspect of trademarks means that if
you don't use a trademark over a certain length of time (such as 5 years),
you lose the legal protection of it. This does not apply to copyrighted
material.
I asked a patent lawyer friend about my previous statement, and found I was
wrong. Whether or not you go after infringer A does not affect what happens
when you go after infringer B.
What does happen is that if you do not respond to infringer A during a
reasonable time, then they have "implied consent", and you can no longer try
to enforce the copyright against them.
Bryan
On Sat, 05 Apr 2008 10:30:49 -0400, "Bryan Stout" wrote:
> I completely share the contempt for the litigious attitude. In a way,
> it's
> too bad that the laws require people to go after the little guys if you
> don't want it thrown out of court when you go after the big guys --
> though I
> understand the reason for it.
For what it's worth, I think you're referring to an aspect of the law
that's unique to trademark law, not copyright. That is, to my
(obviously, extremely limited---no legal training etc.),
understanding, the "enforce it or lose protection" stuff is unique to
trademarks. And that does have bad effects at times, but I also
understand the concept behind it.
Copyright on the other hand, gives the copyright owner a tremendous
amount of latitude in treating people differently. That is, as a
copyright owner I can give different people differing permissions for
how to use my work, and that in and of itself isn't a problem.
-Carl