“…You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think ‘oh, the lawnmower hates me’ – lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle.” – Bryan Cantrill
What value do they get from it? And in order to keep it, they must expend resources, and negative PR (although Oracle already had a bad enough reputation, that this would probably be negligible).
It is just transactional corporate logic. You do not give up something unless you get something of greater value in return. You do not do things for good will, you do things for PR, etc. and sure as hell don’t let them fly under the radar. If some middle or senior manager let that fly without a blessing from the top, they would be ostracized.
I’m not saying it’s right, but I’ve been part of that culture and understand it very well.
Part of owning trademarks is defending them, and Oracle has plenty, so the cost is de minimis.
Even if the trademark is not doing anything for them now, it provides optionally they would not otherwise have. It may also be a negotiation tool down the road.
