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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

#81

Post by akmiller »

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.

The system is a mess. I have a small side project and I trademarked the name, yet a competitor of mine used my trademark to promote their site and after speaking with several people about my situation they made it clear that unless I was willing to put up about six figures to fight it there isn't much I could do.

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

#82

Post by ekianjo »

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"?

Seriously have you ever worked with lawyers? If not, you should probably think twice before commenting :)

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

#84

Post by imgabe »

feld wrote: post #57
steventhedev wrote: post #37

IANAL, but legal protection for trademarks extends to any usage wherein it would create sufficient consumer confusion. Great example: Apple v. Apple. The computer company agreed to not enter the music industry. To the extent of which they got sued when they added a sound card and multimedia features to their computers. They settled for a boatload of money rather than let a judge decide that they couldn't add any soun…

> IANAL, but legal protection for trademarks extends to any usage wherein it would create sufficient consumer confusion. Let's be honest though: walk up to any Joe on the street and ask them what GNOME is. They're not going to recognize it as a *nix desktop environment or a retail POS system.

"Any joe on the street" is not the consumer in this case. People purchasing retail POS systems would know what it is. They are the consumer. They could easily be fooled into thinking that Groupon's product is affiliated with the well known Gnome software when it clearly isn't.

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

#85

Post by michaelx386 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #73

I'm one of the folks working on the GNOME defense campaign. Happy to answer any questions people might have.

They say Groupon's Gnome is an operating system, do you know any details of how they built it? Is it Linux based, etc?

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

#87

Post by jacquesm »

rasengan wrote: post #77
jacquesm wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should definitely save that pic and a timestamp or something to that effect. Bonus points if you do it in front of a lawyer in the right jurisdiction.

Already done yesterday while we were getting all this prepared. :)

Excellent. Groupon already was pretty high on my shit-list, they just elevated themselves to the top 10.

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

#88

Post by dec0dedab0de »

feld wrote: post #57
steventhedev wrote: post #37

IANAL, but legal protection for trademarks extends to any usage wherein it would create sufficient consumer confusion. Great example: Apple v. Apple. The computer company agreed to not enter the music industry. To the extent of which they got sued when they added a sound card and multimedia features to their computers. They settled for a boatload of money rather than let a judge decide that they couldn't add any soun…

> IANAL, but legal protection for trademarks extends to any usage wherein it would create sufficient consumer confusion. Let's be honest though: walk up to any Joe on the street and ask them what GNOME is. They're not going to recognize it as a *nix desktop environment or a retail POS system.

No, but I bet the IT people who decide which computers to buy for POS know what GNOME is.

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

#89

Post by lucb1e »

ekianjo wrote: post #82
lucb1e wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

Seriously have you ever worked with lawyers? If not, you should probably think twice before commenting :)

No I haven't which is why don't understand why they need the money. If someone could explain, that'd be nice...

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

#90

Post by JoshTriplett »

[deleted] wrote: post #83
JoshTriplett wrote: post #73

I'm one of the folks working on the GNOME defense campaign. Happy to answer any questions people might have.

[deleted]

When the GNOME foundation chose it, back in 1997, it was an acronym for "GNU Network Object Model Environment". (And it's pronounced with a non-silent 'G', just like GNU.)
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