On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 22:28:15 +0200 Arnoud Engelfriet wrote: > Francesco Poli wrote: > > How would the revised wording look like? > > Basically, you need to forbid people from doing things with the mark > that create confusion or that make it look like these things are > endorsed by the Debian Project (or SPI?). Exactly. > > I could imagine something like this would be a good start for the > SPI trademark lawyers: > > The Mark Holder hereby licenses you to use the Marks in any way > and for any purpose, with the exception of the following: > > You are not authorized to use the Marks in commerce in any way that > is likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive > (1) as to the affiliation, connection, or association of you or your > product, service or other commercial activity with the Mark Holder, or > (2) as to the origin, sponsorship, or approval of your product, > service or other commercial activity by the Mark Holder > > If the Mark qualifies as an original work of authorship under > copyright law, then the above license includes the right to use, copy, > modify, merge, publish, distribute and sell the Mark or any derivative > work thereof, again subject to the above exception. Sounds good, except for one aspect that concerns me: we are trying to write a good *trademark* license; I would not complicate things further by trying to write a trademark *and copyright* license. I would rather avoid mixing those two areas of law. What concerns me most is making the copyright grant of permission conditional on the no-confusion condition. Suppose I derive a new image from the Debian swirl logo, and assume that my derivative work is sufficiently different that it's not confusingly similar to the original logo. It is my understanding that I would not need any trademark license to use my heavily modified image (not even for commercial use). Is this correct? I would instead need a copyright license to create and distribute my derivative work. With a copyright license that incorporates the no-confusion condition, I would still be subject to this restriction, which on the other hand would not make much sense at this point... In summary, I think that enforcing trademark-like restrictions through copyright would be possibly harmful... I would rather adopt a well-established license (chosen among the ones that meet the DFSG, obviously) for the copyright side of the licensing. The Expat license would be fine, IMO. > > > The "in commerce" should take care of people criticizing Debian and > using its name or logos to illustrate their articles. > > I would suggest making the copyright license conditional upon the > trademark qualifying for copyright. Otherwise people may think you > are claiming that you have a copyright on the word "Debian". Of course. > > In the original message Nathaniel Nerode limited the exception to > only "no false representation" with a qualification that it would > have to be "clearly deceptive". If I were giving legal advice, > I would advise against that limitation. But I'm not so I'm not. Thanks for your non-advice! ;-) > > Arnoud > PS Sorry about the cc, I thought my mutt was trained not to do that. Don't worry... -- http://frx.netsons.org/doc/nanodocs/etch_workstation_install.html Need to read a Debian etch installation walk-through? ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
Attachment:
pgpa7RmRyRb5o.pgp
Description: PGP signature