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This is definitely a horrible move from Canonical, but I imagine they are simply following their legal counsel. In general terms, you have to prosecute violator
by Flimm 13y ago
This is definitely a horrible move from Canonical, but I imagine they are simply following their legal counsel. In general terms, you have to prosecute violators of your trademark if you want to keep your trademark (unlike copyright or patents).
In this case, they're probably making things worse for themselves overall, but I wish people would take the complexities of trademark law in account before accusing them of censorship.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark#Maintaining_rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark#Maintaining_rights
- hdevalence 13y agoTrademark law does not require you to harass people using your trademark to refer to your product. I wish people would not try to justify corporate bullying based on a misunderstanding of trademark law. Also: it's legal counsel, not legal council.
- Flimm 13y agoIANAL, but a domain name is more than just a reference to a product. ICANN gives trademark holders additional privileges when it comes to domain names.
- hdevalence 13y agohttp://www.icann.org/en/resources/compliance/complaints/ip/ http://www.icann.org/en/resources/compliance/complaints/ip/ > Complaints regarding trademark infringement due to website content and domain names are outside of ICANN's scope and authority. The only case where ICANN Has anything to say is in a case of domain squatting, which this isn't: although Canonical has a trademark interest in "Ubuntu", there's no violation since it's being used nominatively,and it's not being used in bad faith. (Search for UDRP for more information on this policy).
- davidp 13y agoYes. Debian has its own restrictions on one of its own logos. See the terms on their restricted use logo on their Logos page[1]; they reserve the right to assert copyright privilege in the same way. [1]: http://www.debian.org/logos/ http://www.debian.org/logos/
- Flimm 13y agoI clicked on your link, and it turns out that Debian have two logos: an open use one, and a restricted one. The one you probably know and love is actually the open use one, I've never seen the restricted one before. (BTW, copyright and trademarks are very different things, be careful with your terminology.)
- davidp 13y agoYes, I said 'restricted use logo' above; I wasn't talking about the open use one. My point is that Debian, like Canonical, may assert their intellectual property rights for whatever purposes they see fit. Some folks (not necessarily you) are confusing "can they" with "should they" w.r.t. Canonical. You're right that copyright and trademark law are two different things. That said, the word "trademark" occurs on that page only in the footer, applied to the name Debian. Nowhere (on that page at least) are the images asserted as trademarks, whereas there's a prominent copyright notice near each logo. I suppose the copyright could be read to apply to the license text and not to the logo, although that would be odd, and inconsistent with the explicit copyright wording of the open use logo.