From: tomw@ccadfa.cc.adfa.oz.au (Tom Worthington)
Subject: Re: DEC HAS APPLIED FOR "DEC ADA" AS A TRADEMARK IN AUSTRALIA
Organization: Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra, Australia
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 07:10:30 GMT

This expands on my message last Thursday expressing concern
Digital Equipment Corporation have applied for the term "DEC
ADA" to be registered in Australia as a trademark (Trademark
Number: 550642). The application has been accepted and the
public has until 9 October 1992 to register any objection to
this.

I said in the previous message that I had some concerns that
such a trademark will weaken the strong standardisation which
currently exists with Ada compilers.

The inside cover page of the Ada standard which US DoD sent me
in 1983 states, in part:

'In all contexts, use of the term "Ada" should indicate
conformance to the standard.'

'Describing, advertising, or promoting a language processor as
an "Ada" processor is equivalent to making a voluntary
statement of conformance to ANSI/MIL-STD-1815A.'

'The term Ada may be used in describing language processors
which are not completely conforming or are not making a claim
of conformance provided that there is a precise, easily visile
statement of their non-conformance of the same time and in the
same context.'
-----------------

The US DoD backed up this policy with enforcement by making
"Ada" a trademark in the US. I do not know if it was ever a
trademark in other countries, or if US protection applied.
However the industry has accepted the policy as if it was.
Therefore customers who see the term "Ada" used to describe
products will understand this to mean "a statement of
conformance to the Ada standard".

If a product trademark includes "Ada" or "ADA" and is owned by
the vendor, I am concerned that the moral and legal pressure
on the vendor to supply "real" Ada will be lessened. It could
be assumed that a vendor will only wish to use the term "Ada"
due to its association with the Ada standard. In effect the
vendor will be obtain ownership of this term, with its
standards implications, for free.

The effort to ensure that the term "Ada" is only used by
conforming products has been made by the IT community world
wide. It is not the case that US DoD or any company or
individual made this effort on their own. US DoD encouraged
the Ada standard to be used by the IT community. The IT
community responded by, to a large extent, self regulating to
prevent the misuse of the term "Ada".

Keith J. Anderson of DEC said (with the disclaimer he is not
speaking on behalf of DEC) on the Internet (Newsgroup:
comp.lang.ada, Message-ID: 1992Aug31.131014.8114@PA.dec.com)
the AJPO replaced the Ada trademark with a "certification
mark" of "Validated Ada". I do not know if this form of
protection applies outside the US. Also this policy change is
not well known. It may be necessary to retain some form of
control on the term "Ada" if the certification mark for
"Validated Ada" is not available in Australia.

An appropriate course of action may be for vendors to agree to
not attempt to trademark terms including "Ada" or "Validated
Ada" and to ask the trademark office to not accept any such
trademark applications. Alternatively some industry body may
apply for rights to these terms, in the absence of an
application by AJPO.

It should be remembered that Ada is now being used for
systems, which if they do not operate correctly, can place at
risk public safety. This could include the control and safety
systems for weapons of mass destruction, conventional weapons,
military and civil aircraft, chemical and nuclear plants. 

The highest standards are used for the development of software
for these systems. It is unlikely that a software package with
the word "Ada" on the box would be simply purchased and used
in these systems. Extensive checks would be applied to any such
product. However the software engineering culture which has
been built up with the development of Ada standard can be
weakened by any ambiguity as to the definition of the Ada
standard.




Tom Worthington
Chairman 
THE CANBERRA BRANCH OF 
THE AUSTRALIAN COMPUTER SOCIETY INCORPORATED
G.P.O. Box 446
Canberra A.C.T. 2601
Australia

Ph:  +61 6 247 4830
Fax: +61 6 249 6419 
E-Mail: tomw@adfa.oz.au

3 September 
1992
.

Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada