Rails Trademark Madness

So, it would appear that the Rails trademark discussion isn’t quite over. On the 27th of July, Dr. Nic Williams registered a trademark for:

• Educational publications, namely, training manuals in the field of information technology
• Dissemination of advertising, scheduling and managing of training courses and programs for others via a global computer
• Arranging professional workshop and training courses

This is in addition to the one originally filed by David Heinemeier Hansson about the usage of Ruby on Rails in Computer software, namely, software framework for developing web applications. Apparently, that one isn’t completely through the door, yet.

What does all this mean? 1) Patent and trademark law seems completely jacked up in the US. 2) It means that the name of a thing is valuable, not the thing itself.

For those of you thinking about filing a trademark on your service, let me ask a question. Are you a great Rails developer, or are you a great developer who uses Rails?