Thursday, September 22, 2005

The rest of the story re WWF

I received some feedback on my Vista article --

"Your article spoke of the Windows Workflow Foundation's abbreviation, saying ("which Microsoft prefers to abbreviate as WinWF to avoid an unfortunate namespace collision with the wrestling-related WWF)". In fact, the World Wrestling Federation Entertainment (WWF) changed its name to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) as a result of losing a lawsuit to the World Wildlife Fund in 2001. The World Wildlife Fund trademarked "WWF" in 1961. The Fund had an agreement with the Federation in 1994 which allowed the Federation limited use of "WWF". However, the Fund argued in the 2001 lawsuit that the proliferation of the web and satellite television broadcasts made the use of "WWF" more widespread. WWE lost so big that the "WWF" logo must be pixilated or blurred even when it shows snippets of pre-2001 events.

I'm willing to wager that the Microsoft lawyers didn't want to tangle with the World Wildlife Fund over an already trademarked set of initials."

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