Re: A Meeting with a Mission

[Dave Neary <bolsh gnome org>]

Hi sri,

Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
> We should talk about trademarks and our team's use of it.  I expect that
> we have explicit use of the GNOME trademark under a set of rules.  For
> example, if I'm in merchandising it should be okay for me to create a
> t-shirt design with the GNOME logo.
>
> Ironing out the use of the GNOME trademark in this team would be useful
> for  the reason as Quim noted earlier to be able to make non-centralized
> decisions if it includes our use of the trademark.

It might be useful for you and others in the team to familiarise
themselves with the current status of our trademark policy - we have a
user group agreement which covers basic usage of the logo (derivatives
which identify the user group as being affiliated to GNOME, printing
posters, non-profit uses of the mark), and we have a model agreement
which we drafted for use with Open Source Factory, a German company, for
commercial use of the mark. I believe there was also an agreement signed
with Hackerthreads, but last I heard, we don't have it on record.

Any commercial usage of the marks has to be done case-by-case and
approved by the board. There's no way around that, it's pretty much a
minimum requirement of trademark law.

Creating a t-shirt design is not a commercial activity of itself. The
precedent of user groups printing up t-shirts & selling them to recoup
costs has happened a few times - no problem there.

If this team is acting as an agent for GNOME on merchandising, then we
need to keep the board informed regularly, and of course, when we get to
the business end of things, ask the board to approve any agreements and
sign any contracts. Beyond that, I don't see trademark issues being that
important.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
bolsh gnome org