Leading Chinese information and communications technology vendor Huawei has overcome numerous struggles in its efforts to become a respected global brand.
It survived a major intellectual property dispute with Cisco, and is now on the intellectual property offensive against Samsung and T-Mobile.
Recently, however, Huawei sponsored an open source project under the OpenStack Foundation – a data protection initiative that Huawei dubbed Smaug.
If the name Smaug sounds familiar, it should – it’s the name of the dragon in The Hobbit, marvelously brought to live in the movies by Benedict Cumberbatch.
The choice of name was unquestionably intentional. “We named it Smaug after the famous dragon from J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit,’ which was known to guard the treasures of the kingdom of Erebor, as well as have specific knowledge on every item in its hoard,” claims the web site for Smaug. “Unlike its namesake, our Smaug is designed to give a simple and user-friendly experience, and not burn a user to a crisp when they want to recover a protected item.”
The problem? Smaug is a trademark, and neither Huawei nor the OpenStack Foundation licensed it from the trademark owner, Middle-earth Enterprises, also known as The Saul Zaentz Company.
Read the entire article at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2016/07/13/huaweis-careless-trademark-use-risks-wrath-of-middle-earth/.
Intellyx publishes the Agile Digital Transformation Roadmap poster, advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives, and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, none of the organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. Image credit: public domain.
