If only there was some sort of blockchain technology that allowed us to declare ownership over things and used algorithms and cryptography instead of policies and lawyers...
Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
211–220 of 224 posts
Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
#212Earlier 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 is real, however there is another rule called trademark dilution. You can't use someone else's ubiquitous trademark, even if it is totally unrelated.
You could call your store Gnome Bikes, but you can't call it Google Bikes. Google is too famous and too unique.
Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
#213Official 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…
Possibly not the same thing as continuing to register additional trademarks, no? Smells fishy to me.
Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right because I really want some randomly assigned government bureaucrat making an argument one way or another on my behalf before whoever decides the matter...
What I mean is that the government itself should evaluate the matter and then decide it, all by itself.
Which is in a sense the same thing - do you trust the government to argue each side of the case and make a decision internally for you? I prefer the court system and an arguer (lawyer) of my choice.
Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I mean is that the government itself should evaluate the matter and then decide it, all by itself.
Which is in a sense the same thing - do you trust the government to argue each side of the case and make a decision internally for you? I prefer the court system and an arguer (lawyer) of my choice.
I don't understand. Why do you think a government agency and a court would take a different decision at a trademark matter?
Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
#216I've created a snapshot of some of the related pages, in case they ever get taken down:
Original GNOME page: https://archive.today/glAva
Groupon Gnome press release: https://archive.today/MQk7o
USPTO page 1: https://archive.today/xWlTk
USPTO page 2: https://archive.today/FpeeU
USPTO page 3: https://archive.today/CpI0s
Groupon Gnome page: https://archive.today/yGhPF
Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
#217Wow, 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.
You think the team creating a POS terminal at Groupon hadn't heard of GNOME?
The very first thing you do when considering customer facing names for products is a web search: first page of hits for me is filled with GNOME desktop.
Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
I think it's basically "because doing the lawing is a lot more complicated than most people think"
e.g. http://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2013/03/why-do-lawyers...
And another view: http://abovethelaw.com/2011/10/why-are-lawyers-so-expensive-...
Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
I saw that and it doesn't implement anything - all it does is register the org.freedesktop.login1_manager name with DBus. It doesn't even try and implement so much as a single do-nothing stub version of any API call.
Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, without these IP laws GNOME wouldn't have any recourse, would they?
Without IP GNOME would not care. GNOME users would know not to associate Groupon with GNOME, and without IP you could call all your stuff anything you want, and that does not mean anything to anyone else, unless you manipulate people into seeing the wrong brand in the wrong place. IE, deception.
Your misunderstanding highlights why we need to demolish the term "Intellectual Property".
Patents and Copyright stifle innovation and should be reformed or abolished. Trademark is essential consumer protection against fraud and manipulation and is extremely important to keep, although it needs to be fixed not to require prohibitive costs to defend one's trademark.