ATLANTA, GA -- The networking equivalent of two ladies turning up at a party wearing the same dress has occured here at the Supercomm trade show.

Calient Networks Inc http://www.calient.net and net.com (Network Equipment Technologies,Inc.) http://www.net.com have announced technologies with the same name - SCREAM. In fact, they've both issued press releases with little "TM" trade mark badges attached to their SCREAMS.

In net.com's case, SCREAM stands for "Service Creation Manager", its new line of service provisioning platforms (see N.E.T. To Stage Come-Back ) - and it's on all of the booth staff's bright yellow shirts.

In Calient's case, SCREAM stands for "Scalable Control of a Re-Arrangeable and Extensibe Array of Mirrors", an ultra high density all-optical switch.

The question now is who's going to keep ownership of SCREAM. Calient thinks it has prior rights, because it announced its name first, on May 22, according to Tim Dixon, its vp of marketing (see Calient Claims Breakthroughs On Optical Switches). "It's a problem for (net.com). I feel for them," he says.

Net.com sees things differently. "We've sent them a letter saying they're violating our trade mark," says Hans Kramer, general manager, broadband, for net.com. "We applied for our trade mark in March or April, and we shipped products way before that with "SCREAM" labels on them," he adds.

by Peter Heywood, International Editor, Light Reading, http://www.lightreading.com