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Re: Debian registered by a trade as TM in Spain!



On Wed, Sep 04, 2002 at 01:30:02PM +0100, Rob Bradford wrote:
> On Tue, 2002-09-03 at 16:59, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 03, 2002 at 01:25:20PM +0200, Ignacio García Fernández wrote: 
> > Can someone familiar with Spanish IP law comment on what weight is given
> > to "prior art" in the case of a trademark challenge?  I'm assuming that,
> > one way or another, some money will have to be spent on lawyers to fix
> > this.

> I'm interested in whether this in fact an issue, primarily because if
> they tried to enforce the trademark prior usage should be easy to find
> given that the date of the trademark issuing is May 2001. Hence the
> trademark becomes unenforcable, i'm not sure whether it is worth wasting
> time and money on attempting to get this revoked. *shrug* Maybe
> consulting an expert on Spanish law would be a good idea as you say.

It's not something we want to leave hanging over our heads, particularly
since there's a statute of limitations (5 years) on trademark challenges
under Spanish law.  There's no statute of limitations if the trademark
applicant acted in bad faith, but then you have the much more difficult
legal battle of proving bad faith years after the fact -- so better safe
than sorry.

Strategically, it's also better to assert our rights to the trademark
instead of waiting for the trademark holder to start suing people
individually for infringement.  The legal fees are cheaper if you only
have to pay them once.

Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer

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