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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

#141

Post by p8952 »

tluyben2 wrote: post #99
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.

It's a bit more extreme than that; read his summary; https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/93i0gkawa4q15lh/2014-11-... Edit: cannot be the one you meant? He is part of the GNOME foundation...

For those without access to the full LinkedIn page: https://i.imgur.com/ocyqh2N.png

GNOME Foundation - January 2002 - Present (12 Years 11 Months)

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

#142

Post by snsr »

cs702 wrote: post #134

Wow, all evidence suggests that the team in charge of this at Groupon is acting in bad faith, trying to bulldoze over a non-profit with fewer financial resources. (I doubt Groupon would ever attempt something like this against a financially-well-backed brand such as, say, "Apple.") Consider: (1) it's essentially impossible that no one involved had ever heard of the Gnome desktop (it's the top result when I search for…

The move comes across as particularly hypocritical after reading this recent Groupon Engineering blog post titled Sharing is Caring: Open Source at Groupon:

https://engineering.groupon.com/2014/open-source/sharing-is-...

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

#143

Post by erikb »

cs702 wrote: post #134

Wow, all evidence suggests that the team in charge of this at Groupon is acting in bad faith, trying to bulldoze over a non-profit with fewer financial resources. (I doubt Groupon would ever attempt something like this against a financially-well-backed brand such as, say, "Apple.") Consider: (1) it's essentially impossible that no one involved had ever heard of the Gnome desktop (it's the top result when I search for…

I agree with 2 but not with 1. I think there are loads of people out there who have heard that there is something like Linux, but have never used it. If you never used any *nix you probably don't even know that desktop environments can be switched or changed. Then how would you know about a specific desktop environment? Not accepting to respect a 17 year old trademark is very, very bad though.

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

#144

Post by dragonwriter »

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.

> Could you kindly explain me then what's the point of registering a trademark?

---

* Public notice of your claim of ownership of the mark;

* A legal presumption of your ownership of the mark and your exclusive right to use the mark nationwide on or in connection with the goods/services listed in the registration;

* The ability to bring an action concerning the mark in federal court;

* The use of the U.S. registration as a basis to obtain registration in foreign countries;

* The ability to record the U.S. registration with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Service to prevent importation of infringing foreign goods;

* The right to use the federal registration symbol ®; and Listing in the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s online databases.

---

from http://www.uspto.gov/faq/trademarks.jsp#_Toc275426681

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

#145

Post by mahouse »

danielweber wrote: post #122
mahouse wrote: post #7

What's the point on trademarking something when later you need to pay $80,000 to defend it? The US... smh

Someone has to pay to do the work of determining if GNOME has a valid complaint. Even if the government were to foot the bill, they would still ask GNOME to put their best case forward, which would involve GNOME hiring lawyers.

The government should do it. If they give you the means of registering a trademark, they should at least be able of determining if a claim is valid.

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

#146

Post by pbhjpbhj »

mahouse wrote: post #7

What's the point on trademarking something when later you need to pay $80,000 to defend it? The US... smh

Well you don't have to. You can rock up to the court and say "as the USPTO records show we hold current trademarks for GNOME relating to computing and computing services" and the judge then gets to listen to Groupon's shit about how that's "not relevant" and such and then decides. Just I'm guessing that GNOME don't want to risk that they somehow get an imbecile judge who can't work out which date comes first 1997 or 2014.

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

#147

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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...

There's a brand of cola called Ubuntu FWIW.

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

#148

Post by alexholehouse »

erikb wrote: post #143
cs702 wrote: post #134

Wow, all evidence suggests that the team in charge of this at Groupon is acting in bad faith, trying to bulldoze over a non-profit with fewer financial resources. (I doubt Groupon would ever attempt something like this against a financially-well-backed brand such as, say, "Apple.") Consider: (1) it's essentially impossible that no one involved had ever heard of the Gnome desktop (it's the top result when I search for…

I agree with 2 but not with 1. I think there are loads of people out there who have heard that there is something like Linux, but have never used it. If you never used any *nix you probably don't even know that desktop environments can be switched or changed. Then how would you know about a specific desktop environment? Not accepting to respect a 17 year old trademark is very, very bad though.

Then those people have no business filing software-related trademarks.

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

#149

Post by vayarajesh »

zenocon wrote: post #114
vayarajesh wrote: post #16

How is it possible for Groupon to not know about GNOME? they probably have so many development machines running GNONE in their offices.. I find it hard to believe that none of their tech team has never heard of gnome.. Infact they should be grateful for GNONE for it being a huge part of linux operating systems and they must have surely used it during the course of groupon's existance

Or maybe they even work for both companies? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8589879

wow.. i am just thinking that how did a company like Groupon thought they can get away with "did not hear" about gnome.. either they are extremely dumb to not think this through or they have already planned on how to defend and lawyer up with the big bucks

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

#150

Post by matt_morgan »

weavie wrote: post #110
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.

Surely though, if Gnome win the case then Groupon would become liable to pay the costs?

Not necessarily. There are a lot of circumstances in which the case could end in Gnome's favor, without that judgment.
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