It looks like we are in for a namespace collision. Someone is planning to launch a digital music service called "Boinc": http://musicindustryblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/in-conversation-with-boincs-adam-kidron/

(With a little luck, it will not last long :-)

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-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

David Anderson wrote:

I've contacted them and pointed out that Boinc is a bad choice of name for a commercial Internet product. "BOINC" is not a trademark. I don't think it makes any difference.

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Trademarks can be specific to an industry and product line, so Boinc for music distribution and BOINC for distributed computing is certainly confusing, but may not be close enough to overlap, legally. Recall that Apple was/is the trademark of a computer company (which distributes music on-line) and of a company that produces music (off-line).

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-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

I foresee the manure hitting the spinning object.
http://www.boinc.com/legal/ says:

13. TRADEMARK INFORMATION

Boinc™ and other marks and logos of Beyond used in connection with the Website (“the Beyond Marks”) are trademarks or registered trademarks of Beyond Oblivion Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. You may not use or display in any manner the Beyond Marks without Beyond’s prior written permission.

They trademarked Boinc! Or at least, as far as I can read that legal stuff, on their logos and marks.

Anyway, forwarded that to David.

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What was the outcome ? I think they will have a hard job "evicting" our use of the word, many searchs for the word will bring us up as much as them so it was a stupid idea on their part from the beginning and if they were half intelligent they would have googled the word to at least see what it applied to and what it clashes with. hec when I wanted a web address an potential name for a company (sparkylabs) I actually googled it and found little of consequence apart from music.

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