Re: Misuse of Debian logo for City Tourism
On Sat, Aug 02, 2008 at 10:04:07PM -0700, Claire Connelly wrote:
> There are 9624 registered U.S. trademark designs incorporating
> spirals.* Many of these are somewhat similar to one another; there
> are typically other elements (e.g., colors, wordmarks, number,
> arrangement) that differentiate them from one another.
> Taking a step back, though, I don't see evidence that Debian's
> logos are trademarked at all, at least in the U.S. Searching the
> USPTO database shows a single hit for Debian, for the word-only
> mark ``Debian'' as applied to ``Computer Utility and Operating
> System Software'' [0]. That trademark is held by SPI.
> The detailed file [1] includes two sets of ``specimens'', one of
> which is a screenshot of the Debian.org website showing the spiral
> logo, but the other includes images of a CD and the docs for
> Debian 1.3, which have a cute stack of letter blocks arranged to
> spell Debian.**
> So if the spiral logo isn't trademarked, then any infringement
> claims related to the logo have to fall back on copyright, which
> covers the specific expression and not the general theme.
Under US law, trademarks exist when one trades on them, not just when one
registers them. We *should* register the Debian logo as a trademark with
the USPTO (and I think this is still under way... I hope?), but the
continued delays in registration don't mean it's not a trademark, it just
makes it harder to enforce it.
But under trademark law, there's no reason to think that this city's video
is infringing, since it's nowhere near the same field...
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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