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Re: Debian logos and trademarks



On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 10:03:52AM +0100, Bastian Venthur wrote:
> I have a question. If I understand you correctly you want to put the
> "official use" logo under the MIT license AND enforce it as an
> unregistered trademark so that someone can only use it if "we" (who?)
> authorize it. This sounds contradicting to me and how does this meet the
> DFSG?

The DFSG refers to copyright licensing, it doesn't cover patents or
trademarks. The difference between trademarks and copyright, is that
copyright covers all copies and derivatives, while trademarks cover
anything that's confusingly similar. So if you independently create a
logo that looks confusingly similar, you need a trademark license but
not a copyright license; while if you create a derived works that's not
similar at all, you need a copyright license, but not a trademark license.

Having a restrictive trademark license prevents people from using
confusingly similar logos, while a DFSG-free copyright license allows
people to make derivatives as long as they're not confusingly similar.

> BTW I am not a lawyer, so what does "to enforce an unregistered
> trademark" actually mean?

See http://www.ggmark.com/protect.html eg.

Cheers,
aj

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