Re: I'll let the Freemasons know Debian is distributing their trademark
On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 09:57:46AM -0500, William Ballard wrote:
> Regarding
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/01/msg00312.html
>
> I'll let the Freemasons know Debian is distributing their Trademarked
> logo and diluting their trademark.
>
> I'm also going to write letters to Duracell, Namco, and Hummer.
>
> I don't think it's right to distribute other people's trademarked images
> as merchandise, even if it's free. It's fundamentally different than
> reviewing the product in a magazine -- which has a purpose. The purpose
> of this is to market Debian and entice people to use it using other
> people's trademarked property.
>
> I think the press will be interested to know that in this corner case
> Debian chose to get away with whatever it can get away with until it
> receives cease and desist letters because it thinks no one will enforce
> these trademarks so the risk is small. Or as I'm sure someone will say
> "there's nothing wrong here" so naturally we can include say the NFL
> logo, right?
Take your vendetta elsewhere please. We are not creating a competing product
with any of these companies, nor are we even implying that they are endorsing
us or are connected in any way to us by including these images. We are not
using these images to advertise for Debian, so I seriously doubt that this
would fall under trademark dilution. For what it's worth, I've had clipart
collections for years which have plenty of images of these types, and these
collections were distributed commercially. Removal of the pacman image is the
only one that I can see any case for at all, but this can be dealt with in a
far more polite and civilized manner than you've seen fit to conduct yourself.
- David Nusinow
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