Open Source Software vs Commercial Software

[ali.muhammad.ca]

Hi,

I have been running 2 opensource projects jMatlab and jSimulink for a few years. I also own the domain names for these free products, jmatlab.org and jsimulink.org. I do not make any money from these projects. There is a very small user base for these products. MATHWORKS has a trademark ownership to the names MATLAB and Simulink for a longer period of time. My products were inspired by these products.

Yesterday, I received the following letter from mathworks.

"We have become aware that you are using our MATLAB and Simulink marks, with the simple addition of the letter "j", for the titles of your software packages, jMATLAB and jSimulink. You also use our marks in the web addresses where you host these software packages - www.jmatlab.org and www.jmatlab.org/jsimulink.

Like all trademark owners, in order to protect our trademarks, we seek to ensure that our marks are not used in such a way as to dilute the distinctive character of our marks or to cause confusion in the marketplace. So while we appreciate your interest in our products, we believe that your use of our marks as described above is likely to mislead visitors to your site into believing that your products are associated with, or endorsed by, MathWorks. As such, we believe your uses of the MATLAB and Simulink trademarks infringe MathWorks' rights in those marks.

We therefore ask you to cease all uses of the MATLAB and Simulink trademarks, both in names of your software and in any domain names associated with your software. ..."

I am reluctantly ready to change the names of the product but I believe I am within my rights to keep the domain names and use them as I want.

Please advise

Regards,

Ali

[Mr. Knowitall]

What non-infringing use did you have in mind?

Keep in mind, if you ignore this and they choose to sue you, they can slap you up one side of the courtroom and down the other if you're continuing to infringe their trademarks.