Can someone legally use the word Java in a business name?
<p>Assume someone wanted to open a real estate office and wanted to use the name Java Realty, would that violate the Java (programming framework) trademark?</p>

<p>A basic rule of trademark law is that a trademark is protected only for use in the same industry, or in regard to the same general sort of thing. "Maxwell House" for example, is the name of a brand of Coffee, and no doubt a trademark. If  A business used it as the name of a brand of mobile home, it would not infringe the mark of the coffee brand.</p>

<p>"Java" as a term for coffee , has been slang for any and all coffee at least as far back as WWII. I doubt that it is a currently active trademark in any case. It is, however, the name of a currently active programming language. Calling a new computer technology "Java" would probably infringe that (although the makers of javascript, a quite different computer language, seem to have gotten away with it). But it is hard to see how a realty company would so infringe. Of course there might be details which would cause this name to be infringing in fact, that I have no way of knowing. You could play safe with Sumatra Realty instead. Evin a quickly dismissed suit for trademark infringement could cost a startup time and money that might be a fatal handicap.</p>

<p>Who would sue?</p>

<p>The island in Indonesia, The Nickname for Coffee, the Programing language, now in it's 8th version, the scripting programing language that has no relationship at all to the first programing language but used Java cause the first language was the it item when the second language came out and they wanted a piece of the action that came with using the word "Java"?</p>

<p>Suffice to say, you wouldn't be the first, and the first two uses are too generic and the second two clearly have a possible suit to deal with, but the first didn't go after the second and both are pretty popular now.</p>

intellectual-property trademark