Re: gnome-mastermind trademark question
On Tue, Dec 02, 2008 at 09:49:34AM +0100, Miriam Ruiz wrote:
> It would be better to have a name upstream likes, but if the name is
> not legally safe for Fedora, it won't be for Debian either and
> ignoring the problem won't fix it.
>From the limited context you've provided, there's nothing to indicate that
legal "safety" even enters into this.
It's been stated that "[Fedora] always rename[s] games which are clones".
That's not legal advice regarding the question of whether trademarks are
infringed by not changing the game name, it's a description of Fedora's
policy - which is, of course, informed by particular cases in which a
trademark holder /has/ pressured makers of clone games into changing their
names. (But, TTBOMK, there is no actual case law on the question of free
software clones infringing trademarks of commercial games, because these
tend to get settled out of court - if for no other reason than that it's not
usually worth the trouble to contest such overreaching trademark claims in
the context of Free Software.)
For comparison, Debian's trademark policy, to the extent that we can be said
to have a policy, can probably be summarized as: ignore trademarks until a
trademark holder presses the issue, then decide whether their claim is
frivolous enough that we should consider pushing back; but in any event,
give preference to keeping names consistent with upstream.
It's also the operating consensus within Debian that package names aren't
within the scope of trademark law, since they're functional elements that
aren't being traded on in any way - so upstream renames are straightforward
to handle with transitional packages.
> (internal note: We should file a bug to Debian's package about this)
Why?
IANAL and TINLA, though I have had the pleasure of responding to a trademark
C&D on behalf of the upstream of a free software game clone.
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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