Re: A Meeting with a Mission

[Sriram Ramkrishna <sri aracnet com>]

On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 03:44:24PM +0200, Dave Neary wrote:
> 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.

Sounds good.  I'll check it out.

> 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.

Does your trademark policy define "commercial usage"?

> 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.

Groovy.

> 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.

It's good to know all the same from the onset.  Feel free to take it out of the agenda.

sri