Re: GNOME trademark authorization

[Josh Triplett <josh joshtriplett org>]

On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 10:28:04AM -0400, Dave Neary wrote:
> On 05/16/2016 09:41 AM, Daniel Espinosa wrote:
> > How to avoid any organization or individual, could use GNOME trademark
> > to promote against GNOME?
>
> You cannot use trademark to stop someone from calling a thing by its
> trademarked name.
>
> For example, Mars cannot stop me from calling a Snickers a Snickers.
> They can stop me calling a different peanut, nougat, caramel and
> chocolate bar a Snickers.
>
> > Is the case of World of GNOME (WOGUE on G+). It recently has pushed
> > blaming, unsupported complaints (no data about his source is based on
> > real data from projects maintainers).
>
> Is the Wogue account talking about GNOME when they call it GNOME? If so,
> there is nothing you can do using trademark.
>
> In terms of things which are not GNOME, you can use the GNOME trademark
> if your usage is consistent with the GNOME trademark guidelines. (say,
> calling a website gnome-sucks.org might be a trademark infringement,
> since the gnome-sucks website is not GNOME, or consistent with the GNOME
> trademark guidelines).

(Disclaimer: not a lawyer, not legal advice...)

While a trademark wouldn't stop using the term "GNOME" to refer to
GNOME, a trademark is intended to prevent using the name GNOME for
something that isn't GNOME, including naming that makes something sound
official/affiliated.  So while it wouldn't be at all appropriate to
prevent "World of GNOME" from using the name GNOME in its discussions of
GNOME (no matter what they're saying), I do agree that it *might*
potentially be appropriate to require them not to use the *name* "World
of GNOME", or to use a domain name that includes "gnome".  Not because
of anything they're saying (again, trademarks do not and should not
shield against criticism), but for the same reason we might not want to
let an unaffiliated/unofficial news site use the name "GNOME News" or
use "gnomenews" in their domain.

That said, I would suggest taking this off-list and discussing it with
the GNOME board.