On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 4:40 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
2008/11/24 Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com>om>:
Whether something can be done from afar or not...
Beria, Luiz and Porantim
are entitled to have the discussion focus at least initially on the specific
problem they point out. I suspect that there is very little that can be done
- the Foundation, and ChapCom, have almost no control over the operations of
any chapter. Even withdrawing permission to use the Wikimedia-related
intellectual property (without prejudging the need for that in this case, of
course) would need to be backed up in court in Brasil if a chapter refused
to comply.
I understand that chapter agreements (certainly the WMUKv1 one)
usually include provision where either side can withdraw from the
trademark agreement with a few months' notice. Though of course if an
organisation wasn't happy with that provision being invoked they may
well be able to argue the point in court.
Yeah and, what Nathan probably meant: If a chapter ignores a
termination message and keeps using the trademark, we would need to
obtain an injunction in *their* country. Now, I think the Wikipedia
trademark is not even registered internationally yet (it isn't in
Switzerland, so I suppose it isn't in that many other countries
either), so we'd run into problems. As a matter of fact, the chapter
could just register the trademark in the country and unless the
foundation was willing to really put up a court fight to get the
trademark back, they could just ignore the termination notice.
Contracts are nice, but you also need be able to enforce them.
Michael
--
Michael Bimmler
mbimmler(a)gmail.com