Subject: Acronyms for programs

From: [email-masked] (Randy Zauhar)
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 09:31:57 -0500

Thomas Wieland wrote:

   > 
   > In the announcement cited above, a program MOLGEN was advertised.
   > We have, however, been developing a molecular structure generator
   > called MOLGEN at least since 1992. So we were a little astonished
   > about this announcement. To use this name, we would have preferred
   > to be informed first before presenting it to the public.
          snip
   > We don't want to get into judical trials, but we insist on the name
   > of our product MOLGEN:
   >    http://btm2xd.mat.uni-bayreuth.de/molgen
   > 

     Speaking as someone who has come up with acronyms for my own programs,
 it has never occurred to me to do an extensive search to check for 
 "collisions" when naming a program that is not intended to be a 
 commercial product. Such names should be thought of as "shorthand", and
 I have seen several cases where unrelated programs had very similar names.
 The case is of course different if you are accidentally infringing on 
 somone's trademark - but is that the case here? Thomas is writing from 
 a university, but is already threatening to send lawyers!!

     Randy

All opinions expressed here are mine, not my employer's

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From: Eric Slone <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 15:03:35 -0400 (EDT)

>    >    http://btm2xd.mat.uni-bayreuth.de/molgen

As co-author of the Molgen program cited as "offending", I can assure 
members of the list that the name is appropriately being used.  This 
issue was resolved with one of Mr. Zauhar's co-authors.

Eric

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 J. Eric Slone                         George Mason University
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