Subject: Re: Bake-off as trademark

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 15:41:33 -0600

>In message <[email-masked]>, "Henning G. Schulzrinne"
writes:
>>I've been approached regarding the use of the (claimed-to-be)
>>trademarked term bake-off. It would be helpful if somebody can provide
>>credible evidence that this term has been used within the technical
>>community for many years. (In case you didn't know,
>>http://www.bakeoff.com/ shows the non-technical use....)
>
>It's used in RFC 1371, from October 1992.  Of course, that RFC also
>says:
>
>   The IAB/IETF are committed to a timely introduction of OSI into the
>   Internet.

There is an earlier reference.

From the text of RFC1025:

   In the early days of the development of TCP and IP, when there were
   very few implementations and the specifications were still evolving,
   the only way to determine if an implementation was "correct" was to
   test it against other implementations and argue that the results
   showed your own implementation to have done the right thing.  These
   tests and discussions could, in those early days, as likely change
   the specification as change the implementation.

   There were a few times when this testing was focused, bringing
   together all known implementations and running through a set of tests
   in hopes of demonstrating the N squared connectivity and correct
   implementation of the various tricky cases.  These events were called
   "Bake Offs".

   An early version of the list of tests included here appears in IEN-69
   of October 1978.  A demonstration of four TCP implementations was
   held at the Defense Communication Engineering Center in Reston,
   Virginia on 4 December 1978, and reported in IEN-70 of December 1978.
   A bake off of six implementations was held 27-28 January 1979 at
   USC-Information Sciences Institute in Marina del Rey, California and
   reported in IEN-77 of February 1979.  And a distributed bake off was
   held in April 1980 over the network and reported in IEN-145 of May
   1980.

   The following section reproduces (with very slight editing) the
   procedure, tests, and scoring of the April 1980 Bake Off.

Of course one would hope that they were called "bake offs"
back then, as well.

>Anyway -- I seem to recall seeing the term in "TCP/IP Protocol
>Transition Handbook", from circa 193, but my copy isn't conveniently
                                  ^^^
>accessible at the moment.
>
>         --Steve Bellovin

You must have misplaced the stone tablets.

-Mike

---

From: "Rosen, Brian" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 17:13:50 -0500

That gave me a lead on a better one:

Network Working Group                                          J. Postel
Request for Comments: 1025                                           ISI
                                                          September 1987

                          TCP AND IP BAKE OFF

How about that!

Brian

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven M. Bellovin [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Monday, November 06, 2000 3:59 PM
> To: Henning G. Schulzrinne
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Bake-off as trademark 
> 
> 
> In message <[email-masked]>, "Henning G. 
> Schulzrinne" writes
> :
> -
> This message was passed through [email-masked], which
> is a sublist of [email-masked]. Not all messages are passed.
> Decisions on what to pass are made solely by Harald Alvestrand.
>

---

From: "Rosen, Brian" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 17:23:42 -0500

I also looked at the references in RFC1025, and found that IEN-70 and
IEN-77 are not on line.  However, IEN-165 is:
http://www.normos.org/ietf/ien/ien-160.txt.1
J. Postel IEN 160 ISI 7 November 1980 Internet Meeting Notes -- 7-8-9
October 1980 
and states:
BAKE OFF SUMMARY Dave Mills reported on the sessions for testing the
fragmentation ...

Brian

> From: Henning G. Schulzrinne [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Monday, November 06, 2000 3:15 PM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Bake-off as trademark
> 
> 
> Thank you.
> -- 
> Henning Schulzrinne   http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs
> 
> -

---

From: Bernie Volz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 17:47:37 -0500

John is correct.

You can do the searches yourself at http://www.uspto.gov.

All of the "bake-off" trademarks found by the system are those relating to
cooking and baked goods, not for software or hardware testing, etc. Some of
these trademarks go back to 1965. But again they are not in the computer
field and so it is not an issue.

- Bernie Volz

-----Original Message-----
From: John Stracke [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Monday, November 06, 2000 4:06 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Bake-off as trademark

"Henning G. Schulzrinne" wrote:

> community for many years.

Well, there's RFC-1025, published in 1987; is 13 years enough? Also, it
refers to bakeoffs held as early as 1979, though it could be that they
were called something else at the time.

In any case, don't trademarks apply only within a single domain? There
isn't much overlap between the markets for baked goods and network
protocols.

--
/==============================================================\
|John Stracke    | http://www.ecal.com |My opinions are my own.|
|Chief Scientist |=============================================|
|eCal Corp.      |Please do not adjust your mind--reality is   |
[email-masked]|malfunctioning.                              |
\==============================================================/

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 17:12:03 -0800

> I've been approached regarding the use of the
> (claimed-to-be) trademarked term bake-off. It
> would be helpful if somebody can provide credible
> evidence that this term has been used within
> the technical community for many years.

Did you know that Paramount Pictures has asserted trademark status for all
of the names of the characters in the original Star Trek series?  Only in
America!

Hmmm..... That is interesting in that I have a friend called James T. Kirk (the
T. is for Thomas instead of Tiberius). Does this mean that in the event of
paramount discovering the existence of this individual, they will sue him to
change his name ?

On the subject at hand though, I do not believe that a Trademark appies in this
case due to the fact that "bake-Off" is not a term that can be specifically and
individually applied to one company or product.

Just my two cents :-)

Jim