Hudson is the latest open source project to flee Oracle’s grasp. While Oracle has said that open source developers are free to fork Hudson, they can’t use the name because Oracle owns the trademark to it.
However, the Register’s Gavin Clarke did some digging and it turns out that Oracle may not own the trademark for Hudson after all.
“A search of the US Patent and Trademark Office’s website throws up 623 trademarks for Hudson for many things,” Clarke reported, “but not for the project Oracle owns.”
And according to a former Sun employee who contacted The Register, Sun made an “explicit decision” to not apply for a trademark on the name Hudson.
