Comments on: trademark and branding http://whacked.net/2008/01/23/trademark-and-branding/ thoughts on open spaces Sat, 22 Nov 2008 05:29:08 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Asa Dotzler http://whacked.net/2008/01/23/trademark-and-branding/#comment-82435 Asa Dotzler Thu, 24 Jan 2008 01:25:42 +0000 http://whacked.net/2008/01/23/trademark-and-branding/#comment-82435 <p>Stephen Lau, yep, exactly. That's one of the problems we faced with Debian. We were able to make specific agreements with folks like Ubuntu, but Debian was unwilling to make an agreement with us about what could and could not be changed in Firefox because they felt that they shouldn't be in a position to enforce that on their downstream customers (that's how it sounded to me, anyway.) </p> <p>Interestingly enough, Debian protects its own trademark to avoid just such a problem. They call it "a bug". </p> <ul> <li>A</li> </ul> Stephen Lau, yep, exactly. That’s one of the problems we faced with Debian. We were able to make specific agreements with folks like Ubuntu, but Debian was unwilling to make an agreement with us about what could and could not be changed in Firefox because they felt that they shouldn’t be in a position to enforce that on their downstream customers (that’s how it sounded to me, anyway.)

Interestingly enough, Debian protects its own trademark to avoid just such a problem. They call it “a bug”.

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]]> By: Stephen Lau http://whacked.net/2008/01/23/trademark-and-branding/#comment-82433 Stephen Lau Thu, 24 Jan 2008 01:00:01 +0000 http://whacked.net/2008/01/23/trademark-and-branding/#comment-82433 <p>... but that becomes troublesome for any product that wants to prevent its brand from being potentially misused. For instance, with free and unfettered/unrestricted license rights to use logo/branding, someone else could take a shell script that did "cat /dev/random > /dev/sound" and put it in a script called "songbird" and give it the Songbird logo/icon, and that would be okay.</p> <p>(contrived example sure, but possible without <em>some</em> sort of restriction on the right to use POTI/Songbird trademarks)</p> … but that becomes troublesome for any product that wants to prevent its brand from being potentially misused. For instance, with free and unfettered/unrestricted license rights to use logo/branding, someone else could take a shell script that did “cat /dev/random > /dev/sound” and put it in a script called “songbird” and give it the Songbird logo/icon, and that would be okay.

(contrived example sure, but possible without some sort of restriction on the right to use POTI/Songbird trademarks)

]]> By: Asa Dotzler http://whacked.net/2008/01/23/trademark-and-branding/#comment-82431 Asa Dotzler Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:52:57 +0000 http://whacked.net/2008/01/23/trademark-and-branding/#comment-82431 <p>I suspect that Debian will have a problem with that. They want to be able to ensure that their downstream customers don't have any restrictions put on them about how they modify and re-distribute the software. Your smoketests would probably constitute such a restriction.</p> I suspect that Debian will have a problem with that. They want to be able to ensure that their downstream customers don’t have any restrictions put on them about how they modify and re-distribute the software. Your smoketests would probably constitute such a restriction.

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