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> failure to do so is also extremely serious because Unlawful Distribution may still be considered grounds for financial compensation as well as a Legal Notice

> failure to do so is also extremely serious because Unlawful Distribution may still be considered grounds for financial compensation as well as a Legal Notice to Cease and Desist, and also to remove all public and private use of the Trademark from all Records. mailing lists, bugtracker, debian archives - everything. Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton apparently knows nothing about how trademark law works. Having something trademarked does not mean the owner of the trademark has absolute control over its use and force you remove any mention of said trademark. Trademark protects your mark from being used by others, commercially, to describe or name their products. I cannot open a burger stand and call it McDonalds. I absolutely can have a "McDonalds Enthusiasts website", and there is fuck-all McDonalds can do about it in court, because my use of the trademark is descriptive. I can have a mailing list for fast food enthusiasts for said website, and we can discuss McFlurries and Big Macs and all manner of McDonalds products that are trademarked. I can sell a "Big Mac Storage Container." And further: no, there's no grounds for financial compensation because Rust would have to prove damages, and good luck with that. Further demonstration that Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton apparently knows nothing about how trademark law works: > and no, the existence of the Copyright License does not invalidate or override the Legal requirement to also comply with Trademark Law. it is astonishing the number of FOSS developers who genuinely believe that they can blatantly disregard Trademark Law "Because Open Source" >> For instance, here is an excerpt without context from Debian's policy: >> "You cannot use Debian trademarks in a company or organization name or >> as the name of a product or service." >this is standard fare as part of Trademark Law. it causes "confusion". Debian can say that all it likes, and corporations do often try to give people the impression that they have less rights than granted to them under fair use doctrines. I can still open and operate a company called KennyBlanken's Debian Consultancy Shop and there is fuck all the Debian project can do about it, because it is descriptive.

lolc 4y ago
Trademark law is set up so that people do get a Mcdonalds burger when it says Mcdonalds on the package. Similarly, people expect to get the Rust compiler when the "rustc" package says "Rust systems programming language". The name is not used in a descriptive sense. The package promises to deliver the goods, but they are (slightly) modified goods. I'm optimistic that a solution will be found. But brushing this aside with "it's descriptive" is not helpful.

lolc 4y ago

Trademark law is set up so that people do get a Mcdonalds burger when it says Mcdonalds on the package. Similarly, people expect to get the Rust compiler when the "rustc" package says "Rust systems programming language". The name is not used in a descriptive sense. The package promises to deliver the goods, but they are (slightly) modified goods. I'm optimistic that a solution will be found. But brushing this aside with "it's descriptive" is not helpful.