Re: gnome-logos package

[Dan Winship <danw novell com>]

Luis Villa wrote:
> Trademark law doesn't give us the flexibility we want, which leaves us
> with options (as I see it) that are basically:
>
> * pursue the Mozilla route (strong trademark)...
> * collaborate with our lawyers to create and pursue a completely
> novel/untested/potentially completely undefensible license...
> * give up the legally enforceable mark and use a political party
> approach...

What about "all of the above"? Yield "Gnome" and the generic foot to the 
community, while trademarking some other things ("Gnome Foundation", 
"Gnome Desktop", "Gnome Developer Platform", etc, and maybe a specific 
special kind of foot logo). Then the community can use the generic name 
and logo as it sees fit, but we also still have a legally-enforceable 
mark for the Foundation to use in official situations, and we still keep 
control over the top-level brands ("Gnome Desktop" etc).

And IANEAPFL[1], but I read on teh Intarweb that someone doesn't even 
have to use your actual trademark to be guilty of infringement; you can 
also sue them if they use a "confusingly similar" mark with malicious 
intent. So having "Gnome Desktop", etc, trademarked might still give us 
some minimal degree of protection with respect to other "Gnome" uses 
even if we didn't have the word "Gnome" itself trademarked. (cf the 
whole "Helix Code" vs "Helix Whoever-it-was" thingy).

-- Dan

[1] I Am Not Even A Probable Future Lawyer