Hi Brian, On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 04:04:34PM -0400, Brian Gupta wrote: > I have been helping to field trademark inquiries for Debian since late > February, and the issue of our Logo has come up a number of times. > Currently, our logo is not a registered Trademark, but is considered > (and treated by our current Trademark policy) as a "common law" > trademark, in that we have been using it to represent Debian for many > years, and many people see it and recognize it as "Debian's logo". > I know there have been discussions in the past about moving forward > with officially registering the logo, but these discussions seem to > have not ended with a clear decision or agreement one way or another, > hence the status quo of unregistered common law trademark. > Generally speaking, as a matter of law, it would be better if we > registered our logo as our Trademark. We had also gotten advice from > our legal counsel (SFLC) encouraging us to do so. > I don't believe any changes would be required to our Trademark policy > to accomodate the change from "common law" to "registered" trademark, > we'd just have the benefit that we'd have an easier time protecting > it, if we ever found a need to do so. Thanks for tackling this perpetually murky issue. I agree that we should pursue getting a registered trademark for the Debian logo, putting to bed once for all the questions around its use. A one-time $700 cost seems reasonable to me; our logo is nearly as important to our brand as our name is. -- 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
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature