Netscape: CNET’s take and Trademark Violations

Saw two things while reading about Netscape on the web today. The first gem is from CNET: Netscape lets the user customize his settings for individual pages–telling the browser, for example, to remember that he trusts a particular site. The user can also select Firefox or Internet Explorer as a backup browser, in case the … Continue reading “Netscape: CNET’s take and Trademark Violations”

Saw two things while reading about Netscape on the web today. The first gem is from CNET:

Netscape lets the user customize his settings for individual pages–telling the browser, for example, to remember that he trusts a particular site. The user can also select Firefox or Internet Explorer as a backup browser, in case the site doesn’t render properly in Netscape.

It looks like CNET is a tad confused about how many rendering engines Netscape supports, and how Netscape uses them only as rendering engines, rather than full browsers. More interesting is the screenshot that they show, which gives users the option to render the page in “Firefox”, and also uses Firefox’s trademarked icon. Furthermore, Netscape’s release notes say:

The Netscape Browser

Version 8.0 – based on Firefox

The Mozilla Foundation’s trademark policy has this to say about the usage of its trademarks:

Those taking full advantage of the open-source nature of Mozilla’s products and making significant functional changes may not redistribute the fruits of their labor under any Mozilla trademark. For example, it would be inappropriate for them to say “based on Mozilla Firefox”.

It would seem that unless the Mozilla Foundation has granted express permission to Netscape for using the Firefox trademark in its software, Netscape is in violation of Mozilla’s trademark policy.

3 thoughts on “Netscape: CNET’s take and Trademark Violations”

  1. It would seem that unless the Mozilla Foundation has granted express permission to Netscape for using the Firefox trademark in its software, Netscape is in violation of Mozilla’s trademark policy.
    I’d assume that AOL withhold the right to use all present and future trademarks of the Mozilla Foundation when they founded (and funded) it.

  2. on rendering engines, does this usage of IE as a rendering engine expose users to any security holes?

    installation of netscape seems to mess up display of xml with inline xslt, including the defaultss.xsl found in msxml.dll for default rendering of xml without associated stylesheets. Any idea why?

  3. bryan,

    Using the IE rendering engine exposes users to all security holes that IE itself is vulnerable to.

    As for the XML with inline XSLT question, I can’t say I have any experience with that, so I’m the wrong person to comment.

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