On Tue, 1 Nov 2011 11:12:15 -0400, Stefano Zacchiroli <leader@debian.org> wrote: Non-text part: multipart/signed > Let's proactively assume the following "reasonable" > outcome of the legal advice I'm going to seek: > > - we are allowed (by trademark law) to ship unmodified copies of > trademark encumbered material I don't think it is necessarily this simple, as one work might be considered infringing on a trademark of some other entity. I had to rename an ion3 extension in order comply with the ion3 trademark license, even though the software was being shipped was not a creation of the ion3 trademark/copyright owner and was otherwise unmodified. > - we are required to change trademark encumbered material which is > user-visible [1] in case we change something in the software that > might affect its functionalities (potentially any functional change) > I also do not believe it would be this simple. We ship functionally modified versions of the Linux kernel, but I do not believe there is any reasonable expectation that we re-brand the Linux kernel. We are also shipping modified versions of GNOME components, but the owners of this mark have made it clear that they don't expect us to stop using their mark. I don't think that changing these is beneficial to anyone. I doubt that there is anyone willing to do this work, and if there was, I think it would be a waste of valuable resources. Trademarks are nowhere near as simple to deal with as copyrights. Its easy for us to determine with relative accuracy, who the copyright owners of software are, and under what license(s) we are able to distribute the software. Its far too easy for someone to create a work which inadvertently uses someone else's mark. Its easy to not infringe on a copyright: Don't copy stuff unless you know you are allowed to copy it. Trademarks are not as clear, You can create a mark similar enough to another mark to cause a problem. With copyrights the burden falls squarely on the person copying to not infringe. The copyright holder does not need to make any action to preserve the validity of the copyright. This is different with trademarks. In order for the trademark holder to preserve the validity of the trademark, they need to actively protect their trademark. I believe that what we have been doing is fine. Only worry about a possible trademark infringement when the trademark owners contact us, and then, consider them on a case by case basis. We need to take these claims seriously when they arrive, and we should, as a policy, deal with these cases swiftly, but we don't need to go looking for trouble where no real trouble exists. If we were to start actively trying to find trademark infringement, I worry about putting ourselves into a bad legal position when we either find some, and don't deal with it properly, or when we do a poor job at finding it. Let's just leave this burden where it belongs, on the trademark holder. I believe that trademarks on free software are a blight. I belive that us proactively trying to help enforce them is only strenghtening them, which is counter-productive to our cause. All this being said. I certainly welcome more legal advice from SPI if it is available. stew
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