[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: On the uselessness of Debian trademarks.



* Michael Poole (mdpoole@troilus.org) wrote:
> Stephen Frost writes:
> > I don't get it.  Doesn't this mean, also, that in the UK people *could*
> > sell shirts with the Coke logo on them?  In which case it would seem to
> > me that the reasons above for having a trademark in the UK would be
> > perfectly legit and very reasonable and enforceable, and their intended
> > use?
> 
> I doubt it -- selling shirts would be a commercial purpose outside
> "identifying goods or services as those of the proprietor or a
> licensee."

Alright, now I think we might be getting somewhere.  So the issue here
is that, because selling a t-shirt with a trademark on it is outside the
scope of "identifying goods [...]" it must therefore be enforced in
order to claim that we're enforcing the trademark and have the right to
*keep* the trademark then.

Given that's the case- do we actually need a *contract* with people
using the trademark outside of "identifying goods [...]"?  Attempting to
find a more technical solution- would it be possible to notify people we
find who use the trademark in a way we approve of outside of
"identifying goods [...]" that we're cool with them using it and to
track such uses in a database maintained by SPI?  Doesn't seem to me
like that'd be too much effort on our part, or onus on their part.  Of
course, we could say that we'd prefer if they could notify us so that we
could review their use and approve it and add them to our database ahead
of time.

AIUI, that still doesn't require a restrictive *copyright* on the logo.
It does mean we need to stipulate what appropriate uses on the trademark
are, but if you modify the logo so that it doesn't look like the
trademark anymore I don't think there's a reason that derivative work
needs to be restricted due to the copyright (unless the author of the
derived work wants to put some additional copyright restrictions on it,
of course).

	Stephen

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Digital signature


Reply to: