On Wed, 20 Nov 2019 12:37:25 -0500, Dick Balaska wrote:

> On 11/20/19 10:02 AM, William F Pokorny wrote:
>> On 11/20/19 5:43 AM, Mr wrote:
>>> William F Pokorny <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
>> ...
>>>
>>> So, this looks like a transgression for instance :
>>> http://persistenceofvision.com/about-us.php is it?
>>>
>> :-) I knew someone would go looking.
>> 
>> I'd lean toward no - but I'm not a lawyer...
>> 
>> 
> I'd say yes, but also IANAL.
> 
> Both entities deal with the visual arts (in different manners).

Not a lawyer here either, but....

My understanding is that it could be considered a trademark violation if 
and only if there's the potential (or actually) confusion in the market 
between the products/marks involved.

If the site cited made claims about using ray-tracing technologies to 
render realistic virtual movie sets, then there might be a case to be 
made that they're creating confusion in the market around the confusion.

But similar to the (now defunct) software brand Novell - a name that was 
created by someone who couldn't spell "Nouvelle" - there was also a 
jewelry company called "Novell Design Studios," who refer to themselves 
in their FAQ as just "Novell".

One could have made the argument that UI design is part of software 
design, so "Novell Design Studios" (which, coincidentally, can be 
abbreviated "NDS" - which also was a trademark of Novell, Inc.) *might* 
have been able to be seen as infringing there.  Except they weren't 
(Novell, Inc. was founded in 1979 as Novell Data Systems, so they were 
the older company up until the brand was retired in 2014).

Basically...trademark law is not as clear-cut as it might seem.

-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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