Re: gnome-logos package



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



[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Thread Index] [Date Index] [Author Index]