Basically that, Eevee its a really famous Pokemon which is copyrighted of course, for example since last month a pokemon eevee icon has appear next to all eeveeeeveeeevee etc etc. this was due Eevee’s anniversary (the pokemon)
So one thing its to have it in a hash-tag and other thing may be have it written in the interface . Nintendo its not one of the nicest companies regarding copyrights infractions.
So thats my doubt, is it Ok to have it written like that inside the software?
This post may sound like something to blenderartists or twitter, but this is probably not a topic for debate or opinology, surely has a legal precedent or case that works as a guide in this topic and the best place I considered to ask this is basically to the core developer group.
I don’t think it’s worth using 5 extra characters to avoid a hypothetical scenario where a company would try to claim that an open source real-time rendering engine could plausibly be confused with a cartoon animal.
Personally I don’t think it needs to be claimed to be an acronym (especially not some silly “backronym” made up after the fact that nobody will ever use) and I wouldn’t even put that in the documentation.
Just call it “Eevee” and even be open about the (well documented) truth that it’s named after the popular Pokemon. If Nintendo wants to go after you then no games payed with acronyms, capitalization, periods, or anything else are going to save you, so it’s not worth making life difficult over.
Just as I can name my pet or even my child “Eevee” without risk of being sued by Nintendo, there’s probably no problem naming a rendering engine after a Pokemon either, since there should be no risk of confusion in the mind of a consumer and you’re not really “trading on Nintendo’s good name”. Just don’t start using pictures of the Pokemon in association with the renderer.
If people are nervous about this, then just consider Eevee to be an internal “code name” just as Apple or anyone else would use for a product in development, and come up with a new official name for it when it gets released.
Do or do not. Just don’t waffle around in the middle pretending it’s OK based on some made-up legal theory that’s almost certainly irrelevant or simply not true.
But then I am not an international intellectual property rights and trademark lawyer so this advice is worth what you paid for it
i would prefer if they change it to something more related to the brand, something unique like cycles which is good and doesn’t need an acronym , nintendo is notorious for protecting it’s IPs…not sure if eevee is trade marked by them or not.
i was searching earlyer today the character trademark was updated in Korea, China, USA (im not sure if in other places too) a few months before the release of “Pokemon Go”(Pikachu and Eevee) i don’t know if the name its independent of the entire character.
All the trademark law and stuff is super interesting and fun to try to figure out, but it’s irrelevant I think, because it only helps you if you’re willing to fight for your position in court. Whether or not you’re right or wrong, or would ultimately win or lose, doesn’t matter if you can’t afford to fight, and I’m pretty sure nobody is interested in spending their life’s savings on this.
Realistically if Nintendo or whomever doesn’t like it, they’ll send a cease-and-desist letter to the Blender Foundation, and a new name will have to be chosen, and life will go on. It’s not like they’re going to sue you for a bazillion dollars. They just want to be sure their property is protected.
One might suggest “why don’t we just ask them if it’s OK?” but my guess that this probably just results in a “no” kind of answer because you’d be talking to a bunch of intellectual property and licensing lawyers whose job is to protect the company assets at all costs, and who have no sense of humor that they’re aware of.
With the Eevee Switch game having come out it’s also quite possible that Nintendo has trademarked the name in a bunch of new classes like “computer software” etc. that might make it even harder to claim that Blender is using the name for a totally different thing than just a cuddly pocket monster.
So ultimately it’s probably Ton’s call as to whether he wants to potentially have to deal with the issue if it comes up. If he’s convinced it’s not going to be a problem, then no worries.
The new real-time renderer should have been given a name unrelated to any other product, whether it will be confused with it or not. Even the name Blender doesn’t really work in this regard. Ever try Googling ‘blender’ without the ‘3d’ or some other qualifying word/phrase? How many of the resulting hits are for sites selling kitchen appliances?
Same thing applies to Eevee. Google this word by itself and you’ll just end up having to add other keywords. And the way Google works these days, the more keywords you add, the less accurate results you get.
The solution for Blender itself would be to make Blender3D (or Blender_3D or 3DBlender) the official name of the product. Of course, this is purely a search engine solution.
As for Eevee, call it BShade or RealShade or ReTiReD… oh, wait. No, no I’m retired, not Eevee.
what ever the legal implications of the engine’s name, its odd that a so random name were choosen, I mean, the other engines all have meaningfull and or original names like Cycles, Blender Internal, Yafray, octane, Mental Ray, but Eevee? what the hell it means?
no criticism against this name but it sounds like " - Oh, I created a new render engine, I will call it RANDODNAR"
I could call it PBRE (Phisically Based Realtime Engine)
Or a familar tech name like Rycles (Realtime Cycles (I mean, it uses sampling accumulation anyway) )
or a more obvious name like “Blender Realtime”
. Nintendo its not one of the nicest companies regarding copyrights infractions.
