Something has got into Autodesk's knickers about getting permission to place that encircled R after DWG.
The timing is curious: registering DWG has not important to Autodesk for the last 25 years. And now, DWG is less important than ever, as Autodesk is paying its dealers more to sell non-DWG-based software than DWG-based software. (Translation: Autodesk doesn't want you using AutoCAD or LT, but rather Inventor, Revit, and so on.)
Last month, the US Patent and Trademark Office again questioned Autodesk's need to register DWG as a trademark. It had these questions for Autodesk:
-- Does Autodesk license the letters "DWG" to others?
-- When did Autodesk start using DWG as a trademark, in addition to the name of a file format?
-- Has Autodesk prevented third parties from using DWG?
-- Does Autodesk have agreements in place with other companies who use DWG, such as Cimmetry Systems, EasyDWG, and Apple.
-- How has Autodesk been controlling the use of DWG by others?
In short, if the answer to all these is "none", "not", or "only recently", then the USPTO assumes that DWG is not very important to Autodesk, and hence DWG cannot be registered.
The USPTO points out that Autodesk abandoned attempts to disallow use of DWG in third-party names as evidence that DWG is not particularly distinctive to Autodesk: "...the refusal to register under Section 2(e)(1) is maintained and continued."
Autodesk has six months in which to respond. In the meantime, reports from the field indicate that Autodesk is working at trying to prevent third-parties from using DWG -- some two decades after the horses left the barn; ie, when the first third-party app (from Cyco) directly read the DWG file format.
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