[CLUE-Tech] Trademark

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Wed, 2003-07-16 at 11:53, Angelo Bertolli wrote:
> > There is a legal aspect here as well.  Red Hat has their name/logo
> > trademarked.  U.S. trademark law stipulates that if you *do not* make
> > efforts to defend and protect your trademark (i.e. defending against
> > dilution, theft, inappropriate use, use by other parties with proper
> > attribution, etc into a large legal mire), you *can not* have the privileges
> > of a trademark.  So, they have to go down this road if they want legal
> > protection from someone else calling their distro "RedHat".  May not seem
> > nice, but, that's the way the law reads. IANAL, but, my best recollection.
> 
> More specifically, I mean what about the fact that a RH distro comes up 
> with "Red Hat" on the login screen?  Isn't it still legal to make copies 
> under the GPL?

Sure, it's legal to make copies. You don't have to remove every instance
of the name "Red Hat" -- you simply haven't been granted permission to
use the name for advertising purposes. What Red Hat wants to avoid is
the idea that a product is "official" when it has been purchased from a
third party, as well as dilution of their trademark. 

See, if a vendor like CheapBytes can sell "CheapBytes Red Hat Linux"
then, after some time, the term "Red Hat" would likely be considered
generic -- and Red Hat would lose the ability to enforce their
trademark. 

That's particularly bad for Red Hat or any open source company because
their name is really one of their most valuable assets. They don't "own"
the code they sell and support, so the name-brand is pretty important to
distinguish them from other vendors... 

Zonker
-- 
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
jzb at dissociatedpress.net
Aim: zonkerjoe
http://www.dissociatedpress.net