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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

#181

Post by scrollaway »

snsr wrote: post #142
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-...

Follow-up, even more confusing post from Groupon:

https://engineering.groupon.com/2014/misc/gnome-foundation-a...

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

#182

Post by zimpenfish »

alasdair_ wrote: post #175

Official Groupon response: https://engineering.groupon.com/2014/misc/gnome-foundation-a... "There is some recent confusion around Groupon’s intended use of a product name that the Gnome Foundation believes infringes on their trademarks. We love open source at Groupon. We have open sourced a number of projects on github. Our relationship with the open source community is more important to us than a product name. We’ve…

They don't seem to be accepting comments despite the comment box. Tsk.

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

#183

Post by voidz »

alasdair_ wrote: post #175

Official Groupon response: https://engineering.groupon.com/2014/misc/gnome-foundation-a... "There is some recent confusion around Groupon’s intended use of a product name that the Gnome Foundation believes infringes on their trademarks. We love open source at Groupon. We have open sourced a number of projects on github. Our relationship with the open source community is more important to us than a product name. We’ve…

So essentially this means nothing.

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

#184

Post by Tombone5 »

toyg wrote: post #154
lucb1e wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in Europe you're not required to register a trademark to be able to use it. If I've been selling red toy cars in Dutch toy stores for five years and they all had a clearly recognizable logo on them, then someone else uses a logo that is almost identical to sell orange toy cars in the same or nearby toy stores, I might very well win that lawsuit. It is geographically limited and limited to the market segment,…

The laws you mention are long-standing, but the trademark system was developed to sort out all border cases that this approach inevitably fails to address. Does it matter if toy cars are orange or green? What if they are toy trucks? Etc etc. Trademark is not compulsory, but it's advantageous in most cases. Without trademarks, each doubtful claim would require a full run through the courts; and depending on whether yo…

The state already needs to keep track of companies for tax purposes, so it seems strange that it couldn't simply void any trademark owned by a company that died.

Then define point of death as a company not paying taxes for two years and not declaring the company to be in some special tax-exempt state.

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

#185

Post by dalke »

dragonwriter wrote: post #159
misterbishop wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Intellectual Property' is not a legal classification, and shouldn't be. Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, and looser-defined 'trade secrets' all have distinct purposes. Saying "Intellectual Property" when you mean "Trademark" gives the impression that the holder has all kinds of legal protections which don't actually apply. Over the long term, there's danger that legal theories will change to further expand the right…

> 'Intellectual Property' is not a legal classification, and shouldn't be. Intellectual Property isn't a classification defined in law, but it is an analytic classification used in law, the same way that various other subcategories of "property" are, to discuss related protections. ∀ X : X ∈ { Copyright, Trademark, Patent, ... }, X ⊂ Intellectual Property ⊂ Intangible Personal Property ⊂ Personal Property ⊂ Property.

Those are not true subsets like you suggest. Consider that moral rights, which fall under intellectual property law, don't fit into the "property" category. For example, the "right [of the author] to prevent the destruction of a work of art if it is of 'recognized stature'" is not something which is true of anything I know of outside of creative works.

In German law, the inventor of a patent has the right to a share of the profit even if developed as an employee of the company making the profit; again, something not shared with tangible property.

I think of the relationship between "intellectual property" and "property" is more akin to "Pluto is a dwarf planet, but it's not a planet."

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

#186

Post by Thimothy »

nikolak wrote: post #163
alexholehouse wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait what? They built an 'iOS based operating system'? I don't understand how that would be possible?

Probably just iOS with a full screen app that's started by default and some changes in the default settings.

¿Apple lets you do that? Seems quite against their usual policies of "My device, my user experience".

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

#187

Post by [deleted] »

misterbishop wrote: post #132
gavinballard wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trademarks are a form of intellectual property.

'Intellectual Property' is not a legal classification, and shouldn't be. Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, and looser-defined 'trade secrets' all have distinct purposes. Saying "Intellectual Property" when you mean "Trademark" gives the impression that the holder has all kinds of legal protections which don't actually apply. Over the long term, there's danger that legal theories will change to further expand the right…

[deleted]

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

#188

Post by rayiner »

skratlo wrote: post #27

I don't get it either. If GNOME (the desktop environment and the foundation) have a trademark on GNOME, why do they need $80k to defend it? Shouldn't the trademark office then simply reject any further application for GNOME name related to computers, software and operating systems? Is this because of the idiotic defunc. justice system the US is imposing on themselves? Where you can sue mall owner for millions because…

The issue is, of course, "how related is related?" The USPTO will do a trademark search to see if an application conflicts with an existing mark. The $80k the foundation is spending isn't for that, it's to convince the USPTO that "GNOME" for a point-of-sale system is unacceptably close to "GNOME" for a desktop shell.

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

#189

Post by golgappi »

perrupa wrote: post #78
JoshTriplett wrote: post #73

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

Can you guys just rename it to genome to skirt this whole issue please? :)

The terrorists want to turn everyone to Muslims and kill them all. Can we just end all other religions, convert to Islam and then willingly get murdered to skirt the whole war against terrorism issue, please?

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

#190

Post by _kst_ »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #94
lucb1e wrote: post #39

In laymans terms, can someone explain why does it costs 80 grand to protect something you registered to be legally yours 8 years ago? If they registered the GNOME trademark in 2006, isn't that supposed to protect them from this kind of shit instead of cost them more money when some big guy comes along and tries to take it?

Lawyers write laws. Lawyers want to make money. Lawyers write laws in a way that makes them more money.

How would you write trademark laws to make cases like this easier?
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