Is carbonite patented?

MiSSINGAFeW · 08-21-09, 09:27 PM

I just saw a commercial for a program also called carbonite. It is an online storage product. Does anyone have rights to the name Carbonite?

Jigain · 08-22-09, 12:23 AM

Carbonite is an explosive made out of (if my chemistry lessons still are fresh enough in my head) nitroglycerin, wood meal, sulfur, nitrobenzene, salpeter and nitrate.

Carbonite is also the name of a polyatomic ion.

Chemistry aside, carbonite is also a substance reoccuring in fictions such as Star Wars and EverQuest.

Not to mention, there's a rather famous online backup service named Carbonite.

Long story short, it's not a unique name, nor can it be patented as far as I know.

Petrah · 08-22-09, 02:50 AM

You cannot patent a "name".

voodoodad · 08-22-09, 03:21 AM

The ad you probably saw is for an on-line hard drive backup service. It's supposed to be pretty good.

gozirra · 08-22-09, 11:13 AM

Originally Posted by Silenia

You cannot patent a "name".

shh, don't tell Xerox that!

Chmee · 08-22-09, 01:00 PM

You can't patent a name, but you can register it as a trademark.

Rather famously, this led to an agreement between Apple Computers and Apple Records (the Beatles' record publishing firm) that the former would stay away from music, and the latter would stay out of the computer business. Later, Apple Computers became powerful enough that they could ignore this agreement, and went into the sound business (I once saw a band with three instruments: a guitar, a drum set, and a Macintosh.

) When they did, they included a new "alert" sound in their OS. It was called "sosumi" (sound it out).

Sepioth · 08-22-09, 02:17 PM

I thought the Apple battle was over the LOGO not the name??

But who cares .. doesn't affect me at all.

aceman67 · 08-22-09, 02:31 PM

Originally Posted by Silenia

You cannot patent a "name".

But you can trademark it. Keeps other people from using it for things that are similar to the product you trademarked the name for.

carboniteaddon · 08-22-09, 07:13 PM

Originally Posted by aceman67

But you can trademark it. Keeps other people from using it for things that are similar to the product you trademarked the name for.

Yep, which is what we did. We went through many choices before we found one we liked and could trademark for game software use.

Petrah · 08-22-09, 10:07 PM

Originally Posted by aceman67

But you can trademark it. Keeps other people from using it for things that are similar to the product you trademarked the name for.

The op did not ask about a trademark.

Chmee · 08-23-09, 05:29 PM

The thread title asks a question. The original post asks a different question. The answer to the first is "no". The answer to the second is "yes". I suppose one could have simply given these one word answers to both questions, and left it at that, but that hardly seems useful.