I'm one of the folks working on the GNOME defense campaign. Happy to answer any questions people might have.
Have you opened a dialog with Groupon and if so, can you share anything of that communication?
Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
91–100 of 224 posts
Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Trademark has barely anything to do with IP laws. You are referring to patents, and trademark legislation has nothing to do with patents.
Trademarks are a form of intellectual property.
Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
#93Earlier 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"?
I'm not sure what you are suggesting here..
That I have no idea what in this whole process takes so much money. If trademarks take this much money to defend, you might as well just sue anyone trying to use your name without filing a trademark.
Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
#94In 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.
Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
#95I'm one of the folks working on the GNOME defense campaign. Happy to answer any questions people might have.
Hi Josh. Can you give us Groupon's perspective on this issue?
Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
#96Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
#97Did I miss the announcement that Darl McBride was taking over as Groupon CEO?
Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
#98I'm one of the folks working on the GNOME defense campaign. Happy to answer any questions people might have.
Have you opened a dialog with Groupon and if so, can you share anything of that communication?
From the article we posted at https://gnome.org/groupon/:
> we nevertheless got in touch with them and asked them to pick another name. Not only did Groupon refuse, but it has now filed even more trademark applications
Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
#99One of the lead security people at Groupon has a big GNOME sticker on his laptop in a pic on LinkedIn. This tells me that groupon is about to get pooped on.
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...
Re: Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
#100IANAL, 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.
The standard is not "ask any joe on the street" but "Will the create confusing among the target consumer"
I say yes, People making purchasing choices over a companies IT infrastructure will know what the Gnome Foundation is, that they create software of high quality, and I can see the case for Confusion. ie
IT Manager: WOW Gnome is now making a great looking POS System.
So the fact that "Avg joe" does not know what or Who Gnome is does not matter in the least bit