Re: Logo trademark license vs. copyright license
Arnoud Engelfriet <arnoud@engelfriet.net> writes:
> Francesco Poli wrote:
> > What I am proposing is just licensing under both laws, but with two
> > separate grants of permissions: a copyright license (Expat) and a
> > trademark license (the one we are trying to write).
>
> I understand that. It's certainly possible. But what happens if
> someone stays within the bounds of the copyright license, and
> strays outside the bounds of the trademark license? Which one wins?
As a copyright holder *and* trademark holder, you have certain rights
exclusively reserved in the work. You can sue for breach of those
rights under either law, since (despite the obfuscatory tactics of the
"Intellectual Property" cabal) the laws are entirely separate and work
from different premises.
If an act would be forbidden to a recipient under both copyright and
trademark law, then the recipient only has license to do it if you
grant them copyright *and* trademark license to do it. If you grant a
reserved right in a copyright license but not a trademark license,
you've granted incompatible licenses to the work and the right is
still reserved to you.
If an act would be reserved only under one law, then you need only
grant permission to it in the corresponding license, since it's not
forbidden to the recipient otherwise.
AFAICT, the tricky part is figuring out exactly *what* acts we want to
grant permission to do, and how they are affected by copyright law and
trademark law, so that we can grant the appropriate permissions in
each corresponding license. IMHO, we merely need a copyright license
that grants the reserved-by-default-under-copyright-law permissions we
want to grant, and do the same separately for trademark; the
combination fo the two will be to grant all the permissions we want to
grant.
HTH, IANAL.
--
\ "When I get new information, I change my position. What, sir, |
`\ do you do with new information?" -- John Maynard Keynes |
_o__) |
Ben Finney
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