Re: Trademark license compatibility with GPL and/or DFSG
On 5/19/05, Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org> wrote:
> On Thu, May 19, 2005 at 09:48:25AM -0700, Ken Arromdee wrote:
> > Isn't it always legal to use a trademark to refer to the product in question?
> > If you have a driver for a piece of hardware that has the trademarked name X,
> > it should be legal to name it "driver for X".
>
> Yes, and there should be no need to use the trademark in any way that
> requires a license for it. Purely descriptive, accurate use of
> trademarked terms is always permitted.
Not necessarily true when used as a name for other things, or in
advertising and promotional materials, especially if you have been
warned not to do so; see Progress Software v. MySQL and the Red Hat
trademark imbroglio. I do not have the knowledge or qualifications to
draw the line; do you?
> Just be careful. You can call it "driver for bluetooth", since it
> is. You can't call it "bluetooth" without permission, since it isn't.
I think (IANAL) that you are safe in going as far as: "The author
(who is not a vendor of Bluetooth (TM) devices or a licensee of the
Bluetooth (TM) trademark) believes this driver to be compatible with
certain devices that implement the Bluetooth (TM) interface. The
trademark holder has not evaluated this claim. Bluetooth is a
registered trademark of <whomever>." But naming things after a
trademarked device, when the trademark holder is iffy about it, is
IMHO somewhat risky.
Cheers,
- Michael
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