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Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon
- jevgeni 12y agoGroupon takes the pole position for the amount of douchebagery they dished out within such a short period of their existence.
- medecau 12y agoWhat about ÜBER?
- marknutter 12y agoWhat has Uber done?
- k-mcgrady 12y agoVery questionable tactics when fighting competition, particularly Lyft. Google it (I don't want to misrepresent it from memory), it's been on HN quite a few times.
- Fard 12y agoThis for example. http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6067663/this-is-ubers-playbook-for-sabotaging-lyft http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6067663/this-is-ubers-play...
- viscanti 12y agoExcept that was actually good. http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/virtues-ubers-operation-slog http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/virtues-ubers-ope...
- gamblor956 12y agoAnd this: http://avc.com/2014/11/messing-with-a-competitors-fundraising/ http://avc.com/2014/11/messing-with-a-competitors-fundraisin... Not only unethical, but quite possibly a tortious interference with contract. Uber is turning out to be even worse than the worst taxi companies.
- krschultz 12y agoI'm definitely not a fan of Uber, but even I wouldn't put them in the same league as Groupon. Uber falls in the 'not great for their employees, but generally useful for society' category, which is really the same bucket as Amazon. Groupon falls in the 'disingenuous startup that enriched early investors on pumped up numbers and dumped it all on society later', with an extra kicker of screwing a bunch of small businesses along the way.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- voidz 12y agoEhm.. so.. GNOME wants our help now. But how did they behave when GNOME 3 was announced to not work without systemd? Or hey, anyone remember that discussion on a GNOME developers' mailing list, where they planned to take out theming support, because "it is going against the ubiquitous experience we envision GNOME 3 to be"? This smells fishy to me. (I said it more harshly, but realised that I went too far, sorry about that.) Feel free to shoot holes in my theory.
- unwind 12y agoFollowing the links to Groupon's Gnome product pages makes it pretty simple to see that the basic claim is quite clearly real. No idea where you go from "this open source project doesn't develop in the direction I expect/want" to "this open source project deserves to lose their brand".
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- VMG 12y agoYou have no theory
- sbinetd 12y agoThat's mighty nice of Groupon to drop money on 28 trademark applications just so the GNOME Foundation (who incidentally do more than make the GNOME desktop environment) can boost their end of year donations. They even managed to get Debian and Fedora in on it too! But really, it must be pretty disheartening to see people accuse your organisation of running a scam, just because they don't like design decisions a number of developers on a handful of your products made. Especially when the software in question has nothing to do with the discussion.
- cokernel 12y agoGroupon has indeed filed several trademark applications for the Gnome name, e.g., http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4801:uz6tu6.2.11 http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4801:uz6... What is the purported scam?
- VMG 12y agoI really don't know what happened over there at Groupon: http://gnome.groupon.com/#intro/index http://gnome.groupon.com/#intro/index Did they truly not know? Did they just think the Gnome project wouldn't care? That they'll win the lawsuit?
- clarkevans 12y agoTrademarks 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.
- gaius 12y agoGroupon’s product is a tablet based point of sale “operating system for merchants to run their entire operation." Could be close enough... This is no Vax vs Vax.
- venomsnake 12y agoAlso for a lot of people the shell is the OS. So yeah. A big criteria about trademarks - customer confusion is plausible here.
- thaumasiotes 12y agoDid you read the article? Here are some of the goods and services covered by GNOME's registered mark: - downloadable computer software for creating and managing a computer desktop - downloadable computer software for use as a graphical user interface - technical consulting services in the field of computer software whereas the Groupon product is "a tablet based point of sale operating system for merchants to run their entire operation." Except I'm pretty sure they mean "operating system" in the plain-english sense, not the "computers" sense. Groupon could apparently avoid infringing in the goods categories by not making its PoS app downloadable, but it's hard to imagine it not infringing in the category "technical consulting services". And yeah, going just from my own idiosyncratic views of the world... a PoS app for tablets does not differ significantly, in terms of what it is, from desktop software for PCs. Here's some coverage from 2012 of an effort to get GNOME software to run on android: http://lwn.net/Articles/510465/ http://lwn.net/Articles/510465/
- mahouse 12y agoWhat's the point on trademarking something when later you need to pay $80,000 to defend it? The US... smh
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- taejo 12y agoRegistering the trademark doesn't make it cheaper to fight, it makes it easier to win.
- danielweber 12y agoSomeone has to pay to do the work of determining if GNOME has a valid complaint. Even if the government were to foot the bill, they would still ask GNOME to put their best case forward, which would involve GNOME hiring lawyers.
- mahouse 12y agoThe government should do it. If they give you the means of registering a trademark, they should at least be able of determining if a claim is valid.
- WoodenChair 12y agoRight because I really want some randomly assigned government bureaucrat making an argument one way or another on my behalf before whoever decides the matter...
- mahouse 12y agoWhat I mean is that the government itself should evaluate the matter and then decide it, all by itself.
- WoodenChair 12y ago
- jessaustin 12y agoI had thought Groupon's core competence is scamming small businesses, not providing POS terminals for them? Do those two things go together?
- venomsnake 12y agoThis will provide bigger surface area for scamming and fleecing them.
- moron4hire 12y agoYou should check out the POS market sometime. They've been scamming small businesses for several decades.
- Shivetya 12y agowhen your business model is easily replicated and done better I guess its only natural to extend it or simply move onto something else and integrate it to your current product. Does seem like one big privacy risk, really I do not think I want my POS terminals connected to the net for any reason.
- moron4hire 12y agoYou mean, not even to process credit card purchases? What about uploading your receipts and timecard records to your accountant? It's really only the nearly antiquated systems that are not on the internet these days.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y agoHow do your POS terminals differ from a website+cart? Aside from the obvious things like barcode scanner, CC scanner, receipt printer, and till?
- vayarajesh 12y agoHow is it possible for Groupon to not know about GNOME? they probably have so many development machines running GNONE in their offices.. I find it hard to believe that none of their tech team has never heard of gnome.. Infact they should be grateful for GNONE for it being a huge part of linux operating systems and they must have surely used it during the course of groupon's existance
- m0nty 12y ago> How is it possible for Groupon to not know about GNOME? A hypothetical sociopath-laden company might have heard of another organisation's trademark and decided to steal it anyway and trade on their competitor's good name. Especially if the hypothetical sociopath-laden company felt they could lawyer-up and defeat the smaller, less wealthy competitor. Could just be a dumb mistake but sometimes malice is the answer.
- zenocon 12y agoOr maybe they even work for both companies? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8589879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8589879
- vayarajesh 12y agowow.. i am just thinking that how did a company like Groupon thought they can get away with "did not hear" about gnome.. either they are extremely dumb to not think this through or they have already planned on how to defend and lawyer up with the big bucks
- gnurag 12y agoShame on you Groupon. Allow me to suggest an alternate name for your PoS tablet: iPad
- robmccoll 12y agoI feel bad that reason I'm donating for the first time to a project that has benefited me and so many others over the years is to help then fight a legal battle not to help support development.
- Andrenid 12y agoCouldn't someone like Google, Apple, or any of the other huge companies who have made billions with the help of *nix and OSS in general step in and help out with what, to them, is a trivial drop in the bucket of money? Also how is it even legal for someone to so openly and malicious intrude on a trademarked name? I thought that's the entire point of trademarks.. it protects you from this?
- iancarroll 12y agoNot a lawyer, but it seems that they're applying under a different class of usage.
- thaumasiotes 12y agoI don't know about that. The GNOME project links to their trademark here: http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=76368848&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=76368848&caseType=SERIAL_N... Under "Goods and Services", I see it as being marked "U.S Class(es): 021, 023, 026, 036, 038" (also classes 100 and 101, which appear to be services). Here's one of the trademarks Groupon's filing: http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86287930&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86287930&caseType=SERIAL_N... In contrast to the GNOME trademark, this one is for goods classes... 021, 023, 026, 036, and 038. That doesn't seem all that different to me. As a sanity check, here's http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86287912&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86287912&caseType=SERIAL_N..., the "FLAVOR FLIP" mark for "Brix controls sold as components of refrigerated beverage dispensing machines". Its listed US Class(es) are: 013, 021, 023, 031, 034. So I feel pretty safe in saying that Groupon applied for the GNOME mark in exactly the trademark classes that the GNOME foundation already owned it in. Also, I'm kind of curious what trademark classes 021 and 023 are.
- pbhjpbhj 12y agoI've not looked at the marks that GNOME (the linux distro/project) hold - as you say someone else can file for marks in other classes, separation by market area and geography allow for otherwise coterminous use of registered trademarks. However Groupon's _use_ http://investor.groupon.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=848707 http://investor.groupon.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=8487... is clearly going to cause confusion [in the legal, TM sense] with GNOME's whether GNOME's mark is registered or not. I'm not sure about the details of confusion clauses under the USC but it's definitely a thing in trademark law. Also, as your 2nd link shows Groupon's is a current application that is awaiting applicant response: presumably it's the use of the mark that GNOME are fighting at present rather than the ongoing trademark application (which they can simply make observations on that the examiner can use to reject the mark [or not if they're insane]).
- skratlo 12y agoI don't get it either. If GNOME (the desktop environment and the foundation) have a trademark on GNOME, why do they need $80k to defend it? Shouldn't the trademark office then simply reject any further application for GNOME name related to computers, software and operating systems? Is this because of the idiotic defunc. justice system the US is imposing on themselves? Where you can sue mall owner for millions because you slipped on his floor? sigh
- Cthulhu_ 12y agoIIRC, the rule is that if you don't step up yourself to defend your trademark whenever someone else tries to use it, your trademark becomes void.
- skratlo 12y agoCould you kindly explain me then what's the point of registering a trademark? Is it something you can then wave with in front of jury? Do you really need $80k for that? Do you need $80k to print out your accepted trademark application, and prove that you're in the business for 17 years? Sorry this is just complete non-sense and failure of the system.
- voidz 12y agoWell what they say is "if it costs less we will put the rest into our product"...
- jabbernotty 12y agoYes, it is a disappointment. And yet, it is the reality. As a result, the GNOME team does still need to pay their lawyers.
- crorella 12y agoThis is really disappointing and could be use to harass a company, what stops a malicious group of people do a "copyright ddos" by just forcing a company to pay 80k each time they need to defend it's trademarks?
- steventhedev 12y agoIANAL, 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 sound/media features. The bigger issue is that the GNOME foundation lawyers are attempting to deal with these competing registrations individually, rather than as a class, and trying to convince a judge that Groupon is acting in bad faith and attempting to use the legal system to force them to abandon the trademark in the face of excessive legal fees.
- jenscow 12y ago> They settled for a boatload of money I wonder if the GNOME foundation would "sell out" - who should decide, and how much is it worth...?
- feld 12y ago> 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.
- imgabe 12y ago
- lucb1e 12y agoIn 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?
- dec0dedab0de 12y agoLawyers write laws. Lawyers want to make money. Lawyers write laws in a way that makes them more money.
- _kst_ 12y agoHow would you write trademark laws to make cases like this easier?
- higherpurpose 12y agoGroupon still exists? Wasn't it on a death spiral a few years ago?
- nap 12y agoI don't get it, what the deal? How using "Gnome" by Groupon hurts GNOME Project? Isn't "gnome" just a regular word?
- kristoiv 12y agoDonated.
- rasengan 12y agoOne 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.
- jacquesm 12y agoYou 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.
- rasengan 12y agoAlready done yesterday while we were getting all this prepared. :)
- jacquesm 12y agoExcellent. Groupon already was pretty high on my shit-list, they just elevated themselves to the top 10.
- tluyben2 12y agoIt's a bit more extreme than that; read his summary; https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/93i0gkawa4q15lh/2014-11-11%20at%2015.20.png?dl=0 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/93i0gkawa4q15lh/2014-11-... Edit: cannot be the one you meant? He is part of the GNOME foundation...
- JoshTriplett 12y agoI'm one of the folks working on the GNOME defense campaign. Happy to answer any questions people might have.
- perrupa 12y agoCan you guys just rename it to genome to skirt this whole issue please? :)
- golgappi 12y agoThe terrorists want to turn everyone to Muslims and kill them all. Can we just end all other religions, convert to Islam and then willingly get murdered to skirt the whole war against terrorism issue, please?
- JoshTriplett 12y agoWe have no intention of just giving up, no.
- hobs 12y agoI think the people replying to this thread think you are working for groupon. That is the only way this makes any sense.
- JoshTriplett 12y agoGah! No, definitely not; I'm helping with the GNOME defense campaign.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- ivraatiems 12y agoNot op, but GNOME had the name first...
- 12y ago
- lbredeso 12y agoDid I miss the announcement that Darl McBride was taking over as Groupon CEO?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- rectang 12y agoDonated. I hope that Groupon finds its ability to attract and retain engineering talent substantially degraded.
- ommunist 12y agoDonated few bucks. I encourage everyone to do more than me. Lads, this tiny bit of freedom is in your hands. Please do the proper thing.
- StevePerkins 12y agoHow is this trademark infringement? Generally speaking, you're allowed to use a trademarked word in a different field (and even trademark in that field yourself!). The classic example is Dominos pizza vs. Domino sugar: http://www.wolverine-startuplaw.com/2014/03/06/analyzing-the-looming-trademark-disputes-over-facebooks-paper-part-3-of-3/ http://www.wolverine-startuplaw.com/2014/03/06/analyzing-the... Here, "Gnome" is being used in two "technical" contexts... but that's a pretty broad brush to paint with for claiming overlap.
- misterbishop 12y agoConsidering both projects comprise a software user interface, I'd say it's close enough to be concerned.
- cs702 12y agoWow, 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 "gnome" on Google); and (2) after being contacted by the Gnome Foundation, Groupon filed even more trademark applications. There are a lot of decent, hard-working hackers at Groupon, and quite a few of them, I'm sure, regularly visit HN. They won't be happy to find out about this. Are there any Groupon insiders here willing to comment on this, maybe anonymously? -- UPDATE: Groupon just released an official response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8590343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8590343 -- they now say they will be "glad to look for another name." If they really mean it, kudos to them for changing their position!
- snsr 12y agoThe move comes across as particularly hypocritical after reading this recent Groupon Engineering blog post titled Sharing is Caring: Open Source at Groupon: https://engineering.groupon.com/2014/open-source/sharing-is-caring-open-source-at-groupon/ https://engineering.groupon.com/2014/open-source/sharing-is-...
- scrollaway 12y agoFollow-up, even more confusing post from Groupon: https://engineering.groupon.com/2014/misc/gnome-foundation-and-groupon-product-names/ https://engineering.groupon.com/2014/misc/gnome-foundation-a...
- natch 12y agoThis post makes it even more clear that the Groupon people behind this have a poorly developed understanding of ethics and scruples. "Trying to come to a resolution" looks like code for "we've been threatening Gnome with costly legal expenses."
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- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- buster 12y agoI love Gnome and use it daily but obviously it's not a desktop environment and doesn't copy Gnome. I don't think real words like gnome (or windows) should be trademarks and surely not when two companies do two completely different things. For sure, the gnome foundation doesn't want to sue garden gnome manufacturers as well.
- swang 12y agoDoes Paypal still randomly freeze accounts when they get an influx of money?
- towelguy 12y agoWhat strikes me even more odd is that they reached their daily Bitcoin limit.
- alasdair_ 12y agoOfficial Groupon response: https://engineering.groupon.com/2014/misc/gnome-foundation-and-groupon-product-names/ 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 been communicating with the Gnome Foundation for months to try to come to a mutually satisfactory resolution, including alternative branding options, and we’re happy to continue those conversations. And if we can’t come up with a resolution, we’ll be glad to look for another name. We will continue to have an open line of communication with the Gnome Foundation until this matter is resolved."
- zimpenfish 12y agoThey don't seem to be accepting comments despite the comment box. Tsk.
- voidz 12y agoSo essentially this means nothing.
- robjh 12y agoLooking for another name IS the appropriate resolution.
- alasdair_ 12y agoOffering GNOME a bunch of money to use the name in a specific context could be another. That could be a win for the project overall.
- CaptainZapp 12y agoI may regret this, but based on this response there's only one conclusion to come to: You folks (Groupon) are full of shit!
- gaius 12y ago
- 1945795 12y agoIMHO gnome should spent the money on the people who create and maintain the software, I don't see how funneling resources into the legal system is in any way beneficial to open and free software.
- towelguy 12y agoIf 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...
- xrjn 12y agoI've created a snapshot of some of the related pages, in case they ever get taken down: Original GNOME page: https://archive.today/glAva https://archive.today/glAva Groupon Gnome press release: https://archive.today/MQk7o https://archive.today/MQk7o USPTO page 1: https://archive.today/xWlTk https://archive.today/xWlTk USPTO page 2: https://archive.today/FpeeU https://archive.today/FpeeU USPTO page 3: https://archive.today/CpI0s https://archive.today/CpI0s Groupon Gnome page: https://archive.today/yGhPF https://archive.today/yGhPF