On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 11:46 AM, Ting Chen<wing.philopp(a)gmx.de> wrote:
It is the law that forces us to do this.
For example according to the american trademark law if we don't
effectively take strength to defend our trademark, we will lose the
right on them. Which would mean that one day everyone, every company can
use our name and our logo to do EVERYTHING. This is one issue. The other
issue is that other companies could occupy the name and the logo and
register it as their trademark, so that one day we will lose the right
to use them. This thread is real. There were companies who tried to
register the name Wikipedia in China. And the logo of the german
newspaper Taz was once occupied by another company in Germany.
The Apache Foundation logo is a registered trademark AND licensed
under the Apache license. A number of very old companies hold
trademarks on logos that have passed into the public domain under
copyright law due to age (Coca-Cola for example). Other companies
hold trademarks that are ineligible for copyright to begin with due to
lack of creativity. Commons has a very large collection of such marks
[1].
It is entirely possible to vigorously defend a trademark against
confusion in the marketplace (e.g. the traditional domain of trademark
law) while also relaxing copyright restrictions to create an
authorized use regime. For example, creating guidelines on when
Wikimedians are allowed to use WMF logos inside and outside the
projects would be a start.
The fact that all our logos remain "all rights reserved" is very
unbecoming for a Foundation committed to free content creation and
dissemination.
-Robert Rohde
[1]
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Company_logos