Re: Trademark license compatibility with GPL and/or DFSG
xanthophile@gmail.com wrote:
>The company in question is willing to negotiate terms for a trademark
>license that is agreeable to all parties.
>Obviously any advertising or
>guarantee restrictions are unacceptable to us.
Well, no; some such restrictions are acceptable. We accept the required "NO
WARRANTY" clauses in lots of licenses. I think that a restriction which
required that we note that *they* aren't guaranteeing it would be fine.
>Unlimited use of the trademark is unacceptable to them.
Well, first of all we don't want or need that. We can use the trademark in
most of the ways we want to without hitting any trademark restrictions. I
don't have the case reference here, but there was a case involving TSR and
products labelled "Compatible with Dungeons and Dragons", and it was ruled
that that was *not* a trademark violation (although TSR kept threatening
people who did it with lawsuits for years anyway).
Basically, we can't legally use a trademark (without a license) in ways which
may cause confusion about the origin of the product; we can use it in all
other ways and be on safe legal ground under current law. Putting the
trademark in the name of the driver might lead people to think that the
driver was from the company which owns the trademark, so that would
require a license.
How about this license:
Anyone may use the trademark <trademark> as part of the name of a product
designed to work with <the hardware>; provided that the product using the
trademark in its name, and any advertising for it using the trademark,
prominently mentions that the product is not produced by or supported by the
makers of <the hardware>.
Using the trademark in the name is the only thing we want which would actually
hit trademark restrictions as far as I can tell, so that's all we need a
license for. Disclaimers are required by a lot of licenses and should be
acceptable (much like NO WARRANTY requirements). With this license, the
disclaimers are the only restriction, and this restriction applies solely to
usage of trademarks in an otherwise-maybe-infringing manner, not to anything
else. Among other things, I believe this keeps it GPL-compatible, since the
product can be distributed without agreeing to the restrictions simply by
changing the name (which is not part of the copyright-covered material).
>They want their trademarks stripped from modified
>code that is essentially different in intent and purpose from the
>original code.
Well, that's fine; we don't want to use their trademarks for things which
aren't designed to work with their hardware, now do we? (At least, except in
a historical context, which certainly wouldn't be a trademark violation.)
So what do you think they would say about the model trademark license I just
proposed? (Don't use it until debian-legal has had a few days to nitpick it,
of course.) I think it's a free license, although others may disagree; the
key point is that it is not trying to do anything but prevent confusion, and
it doesn't overreach.
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