Re: On the uselessness of Debian trademarks.
On 2004-05-07 14:20:37 +0100 Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> wrote:
Uh, or they use the Debian trademark for something that's not Debian
at
all.. That's not necessairly claiming it as backing or endorsement
from
Debian.
If it's software, it seems illegal anyway. If it's not software, it's
probably outside the scope of debian's registered trademark.
Not only is it not very Debian, but accurate use of the Debian mark
to
refer to our Debian doesn't look like something we can stop with
trademarking in the UK:
I don't get it. Doesn't this mean, also, that in the UK people
*could*
sell shirts with the Coke logo on them?
If it is just the logo, I think it could be argued that the shirts
were represented as a product from the registrant, which may be
blockable depending on the registration details. It would be difficult
to use trademark law to stop you honestly selling shirts with a
picture of a Coke can or bottle on it, as I understand it. I'm not a
lawyer and I think you should consult one before trying this at home,
though.
Do you support trying to use the debian mark to crack down on sellers
of shirts without contracts with SPI?
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 don't understand how this follows from the trademark law not
preventing sale of Coke-related shirts.
Or is the problem with the Coke logo really with it being
copyrighted,
I believe this is a problem and part of the reason why the Coke logo
design changes periodically. The coke photo shirt mentioned above may
infringe copyright, depending on its purpose.
in which case having the trademark for the reasons above
and the copyright with a different license than the Coke folks do
would
seem perfectly reasonable and, again, seemingly enforcable unless
there's some reason you can't enforce a trademark unless you're very
strict with the copyright on it? The two would seem like seperate
issues to me.
They are almost completely different, which is why using copyright
licence conditions to enforce trademarks usually results in a non-free
licence. That's all I was noting.
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing
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