From cube-lovers-errors@mc.lcs.mit.edu Thu Nov 12 15:00:46 1998 Return-Path: Received: from sun28.aic.nrl.navy.mil by mc.lcs.mit.edu (8.8.8/mc) with SMTP id PAA26362; Thu, 12 Nov 1998 15:00:45 -0500 (EST) Precedence: bulk Errors-To: cube-lovers-errors@mc.lcs.mit.edu Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 15:01:40 +0000 From: David Singmaster To: cube-lovers@ai.mit.edu Message-Id: <009CF1D5.D1348312.50@ice.sbu.ac.uk> Subject: Use of the name Rubik's Cube The lawyers are being obsessively zealous as the name is certainly well on its way to becoming a common noun. It was included in the Oxford English Dictionary in the mid-1980s. Other examples are Kleenex and Aspirin, which were both originally tradenames and their owners fought to retain them but eventually lost. Xerox is fighting a rear-guard action on its name. If you don't want to get involved in legal hassle, I suggest that you use the name Magic Cube which was the original name and is such a common term that they can't claim it is a trademark. DAVID SINGMASTER, Professor of Mathematics and Metagrobologist School of Computing, Information Systems and Mathematics Southbank University, London, SE1 0AA, UK. Tel: 0171-815 7411; fax: 0171-815 7499; email: zingmast or David.Singmaster @sbu.ac.uk [ Moderator's note: I am still dropping messages that consist mainly of generic comments on intellectual property issues. There a great variety of individualistic and contentious debate on these topics that you may follow in dedicated fora such as the Usenet group misc.int-property. I am not yet persnickety enough to elide the third and fourth sentences from the above, but they are on the edge. I will also note that the term "Magic Cube" is also used to refer to a cubical array of natural numbers whose orthogonal and diagonal rows sum to the same number, as a generalization of "Magic Square", so it is advisable to include context such as "The geometrical puzzle originally known as the Hungarian Magic Cube." ]