How can I "reserve" a name for a programming language?
March 29, 2016 2:59 PM   Subscribe

I'm designing a programming language (yeah, like the world needs another pl). Though the design is in flux, I'd like to "reserve" the name of the language. I don't anticipate making any money from this exercise, so I'm not sure filing for a trademark is the right way to go, nor do I want to spend any money on this. Would creating a github repo do the job? Posting to a tech site?

To quote Donald Knuth: "The most important thing in a programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name, and now I am looking for a suitable language."
posted by cyclicker to Technology (7 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
There will always be naming collisions, so you can't really "reserve" the name, but you might be able to discourage others from using it if you register $YOURNAME.org or $YOURNAME-lang.org and make a github repo where it is clear that it is a PL. If somebody else has working code and users, they'll win the naming war.
posted by beerbajay at 3:06 PM on March 29, 2016 [5 favorites]


I can tell you from experience writing a high-performance open-source genomics toolkit, that people will go with a weaker alternative with a similar name, if it has more mindshare. Ship code and get people on board, even it is in the early stages.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 3:12 PM on March 29, 2016 [6 favorites]


Seconding that registering the domains and github repo is probably the best first step here, if you don't actually have anything ready to ship yet, but unless you go through the exercise of getting a trademark, I don't think it'll actually matter all that much until you have working code and real users.
posted by Aleyn at 3:48 PM on March 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


Good luck with that.
Just look at how behemoths like Apple charge in and take any name they want. Cisco already had an operating system called "iOS" and a product called "iPhone", for example.
Trademarking the name gives you a litle bit of protection, so you may as well do that. It at least means any newcomers might have to make a deal with you.
posted by w0mbat at 4:13 PM on March 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


Just look at how behemoths like Apple charge in and take any name they want. Cisco already had an operating system called "iOS" and a product called "iPhone", for example.

You left out the part where Apple licensed the trademarks, probably for big sacks of money: http://blogs.cisco.com/news/cisco_and_apple_agreement_on_ios_trademark

Although, the licensing did happen later.
posted by sideshow at 5:14 PM on March 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


On the other hand, see the story of the two Go programming languages.
posted by Candleman at 6:04 PM on March 29, 2016


There's something called common law trademark rights. But the key issue for you might be the definition of "who first uses a trademark in commerce". I'm not a trademark attorney, but it seems to me that if you start using the name first, even without registering it, you might have common law trademark rights, but that probably much depends on the definition of "in commerce".
posted by OCDan at 10:45 PM on March 29, 2016


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