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Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon

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Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon

#61

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

Shivetya wrote: post #38
jessaustin wrote: post #15

I had thought Groupon's core competence is scamming small businesses, not providing POS terminals for them? Do those two things go together?

when your business model is easily replicated and done better I guess its only natural to extend it or simply move onto something else and integrate it to your current product. Does seem like one big privacy risk, really I do not think I want my POS terminals connected to the net for any reason.

How do your POS terminals differ from a website+cart? Aside from the obvious things like barcode scanner, CC scanner, receipt printer, and till?

Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon

#62

Post by Argorak »

voidz wrote: post #25
the_why_of_y wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where exactly was it "announced" that GNOME 3 does "not work without systemd"? GNOME 3 works on FreeBSD[1][2], you just don't get the robust and secure virtual terminal switching that only systemd's logind running on Linux can provide. GTK+ 3 is now fully themeable with standard W3C CSS[3]. You may need to use Tweak Tool to change your theme, but is that really too much to ask for? But please, don't let these facts s…

The only argument I tried to make, admittedly poorly, is that I notice a contrast between how good they say they are for open source, and actual behaviour from the developers. I did not say or intend to say "good for them, I hope GNOME loses their brand", well ok I did say that a little. So let me state it differently - that many of their own design decisions also were against open (libre) source philosophies.

The product being free software doesn't entitle you to anything regarding their project policies, steering and development.

It entitles you to a number of rights on the resulting product, nothing less and more. And that's already quite a lot.

Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon

#63

Post by tzs »

kaoD wrote: post #24
clarkevans wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trademarks aren’t universal; they are divided into classifications e.g. market segments. Just because the name is the same, doesn't mean the PTO will think of them as being in the same space.

I always thought that was more theoretical than real. For instance, could I launch an OS called CocaCola? I don't think so...

No, it's real. If it wasn't, the GNOME Foundation would have not been able to trademark GNOME, since that has been a registered trademark of The Lake County Nursery in Perry, Ohio since 1980. They use it for some line of flowers they sell, I believe.

Note that the word gnome existed before the first company that used it as a product name came around. Not so with CocaCola. That word came into existence for a product, and it is also the name of the company that produces the product. That makes it a lot harder to successfully argue that using it on, say, an OS would not cause confusion.

Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon

#64

Post by [deleted] »

skratlo wrote: post #35
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, the rule is that if you don't step up yourself to defend your trademark whenever someone else tries to use it, your trademark becomes void.

Could you kindly explain me then what's the point of registering a trademark? Is it something you can then wave with in front of jury? Do you really need $80k for that? Do you need $80k to print out your accepted trademark application, and prove that you're in the business for 17 years? Sorry this is just complete non-sense and failure of the system.

[deleted]

Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon

#66

Post by nodata »

lucb1e wrote: post #49
FooBarWidget wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because lawyers are that expensive.

Let's assume they cost $500 an hour, which is probably enough to pay three of them but I have no idea about the price so let's assume it's that. Then $80k / 500 = 160 hours. Does it take 160 hours, or 4 work weeks full-time, to write a letter or fill out some form saying that "hey, we registered this back in 2006, you should reject these applications"?

I'm not sure what you are suggesting here..

Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon

#67

Post by crorella »

jabbernotty wrote: post #44
skratlo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you kindly explain me then what's the point of registering a trademark? Is it something you can then wave with in front of jury? Do you really need $80k for that? Do you need $80k to print out your accepted trademark application, and prove that you're in the business for 17 years? Sorry this is just complete non-sense and failure of the system.

Yes, it is a disappointment. And yet, it is the reality. As a result, the GNOME team does still need to pay their lawyers.

This is really disappointing and could be use to harass a company, what stops a malicious group of people do a "copyright ddos" by just forcing a company to pay 80k each time they need to defend it's trademarks?

Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon

#68

Post by bad_user »

skratlo wrote: post #35
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, the rule is that if you don't step up yourself to defend your trademark whenever someone else tries to use it, your trademark becomes void.

Could you kindly explain me then what's the point of registering a trademark? Is it something you can then wave with in front of jury? Do you really need $80k for that? Do you need $80k to print out your accepted trademark application, and prove that you're in the business for 17 years? Sorry this is just complete non-sense and failure of the system.

Not only that, but those $80k could have paid for quite a few months of development, but instead those will be money going down the drain because of a broken justice system. And they have the nerve to say that IP laws are fueling innovation.

Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon

#69

Post by thaumasiotes »

iancarroll wrote: post #29
Andrenid wrote: post #23

Couldn't someone like Google, Apple, or any of the other huge companies who have made billions with the help of *nix and OSS in general step in and help out with what, to them, is a trivial drop in the bucket of money? Also how is it even legal for someone to so openly and malicious intrude on a trademarked name? I thought that's the entire point of trademarks.. it protects you from this?

Not a lawyer, but it seems that they're applying under a different class of usage.

I don't know about that. The GNOME project links to their trademark here: http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=76368848&caseType=SERIAL_N...

Under "Goods and Services", I see it as being marked "U.S Class(es): 021, 023, 026, 036, 038" (also classes 100 and 101, which appear to be services).

Here's one of the trademarks Groupon's filing: http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86287930&caseType=SERIAL_N...

In contrast to the GNOME trademark, this one is for goods classes... 021, 023, 026, 036, and 038. That doesn't seem all that different to me.

As a sanity check, here's http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86287912&caseType=SERIAL_N..., the "FLAVOR FLIP" mark for "Brix controls sold as components of refrigerated beverage dispensing machines". Its listed US Class(es) are: 013, 021, 023, 031, 034. So I feel pretty safe in saying that Groupon applied for the GNOME mark in exactly the trademark classes that the GNOME foundation already owned it in. Also, I'm kind of curious what trademark classes 021 and 023 are.

Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon

#70

Post by alexlarsson »

makomk wrote: post #42
the_why_of_y wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where exactly was it "announced" that GNOME 3 does "not work without systemd"? GNOME 3 works on FreeBSD[1][2], you just don't get the robust and secure virtual terminal switching that only systemd's logind running on Linux can provide. GTK+ 3 is now fully themeable with standard W3C CSS[3]. You may need to use Tweak Tool to change your theme, but is that really too much to ask for? But please, don't let these facts s…

If I recall correctly, it's not just virtual terminal switching that you lose but also the ability to shutdown, reboot, suspend and hibernate your PC from the GUI - all of which now require logind - and probably other things like device mounting too. Gnome's also moving those to use Linux-specific kdbus ioctls directly. Oh, and those links are from 6 months ago, I wouldn't be surprised if things have gotten worse sin…

Here is an implementation of the logind API for openbsd:

https://uglyman.kremlin.cc/gitweb/gitweb.cgi?p=systembsd.git...

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