I just found AstroWikipedia, a small polish-language wiki of astrology using PhpWiki at astrowikipedia.com. It seems that they created the name independently of us. Should we do anything? It would be bad to force them to change their name, but should we at least get them to say they're not connected with Wikipedia? LDan
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On Sat, 2003-10-11 at 21:40, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
I just found AstroWikipedia, a small polish-language wiki of astrology using PhpWiki at astrowikipedia.com. It seems that they created the name independently of us. Should we do anything? It would be bad to force them to change their name, but should we at least get them to say they're not connected with Wikipedia? LDan
Don't see any reason to. They're not claiming to be connected to Wikipedia, and Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and all our other sites all list which sites are ours.
On Sun, 12 Oct 2003, cprompt wrote:
Don't see any reason to. They're not claiming to be connected to Wikipedia, and Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and all our other sites all list which sites are ours.
IANAL. But, my understand is that general use of the term Wikipedia could generify it, thus preventing the Wikimedia foundation from gaining a trademark on the name at a later date.
I think we should either move to stop them using the term, or take other actions that would prevent the name being generified.
Imran
I'll defer to Alex's judgement on this, but yes, that's my thinking as well.
Imran Ghory wrote:
On Sun, 12 Oct 2003, cprompt wrote:
Don't see any reason to. They're not claiming to be connected to Wikipedia, and Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and all our other sites all list which sites are ours.
IANAL. But, my understand is that general use of the term Wikipedia could generify it, thus preventing the Wikimedia foundation from gaining a trademark on the name at a later date.
I think we should either move to stop them using the term, or take other actions that would prevent the name being generified.
Imran
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On Tuesday 14 October 2003 14:20, Imran Ghory wrote:
On Sun, 12 Oct 2003, cprompt wrote:
Don't see any reason to. They're not claiming to be connected to Wikipedia, and Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and all our other sites all list which sites are ours.
IANAL. But, my understand is that general use of the term Wikipedia could generify it, thus preventing the Wikimedia foundation from gaining a trademark on the name at a later date.
NAI ;) But, could WIkipedia be trademark at all as it is generic term? Noone can trademark "Cherry Jam" as a name for cherry jam, could anyone trademark "Wikipedia" as a name for a Wiki encyclopedia?
Nikola Smolenski wrote:
NAI ;) But, could WIkipedia be trademark at all as it is generic term? Noone can trademark "Cherry Jam" as a name for cherry jam, could anyone trademark "Wikipedia" as a name for a Wiki encyclopedia?
Yes, Wikipedia is a trademark, and soon to be a registered trademark.
It is *not* a generic term. It is a completely invented term.
--Jimbo
From: "Nikola Smolenski" smolensk@eunet.yu
On Tuesday 14 October 2003 14:20, Imran Ghory wrote:
On Sun, 12 Oct 2003, cprompt wrote:
Don't see any reason to. They're not claiming to be connected to Wikipedia, and Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and all our other sites all list which sites are ours.
IANAL. But, my understand is that general use of the term Wikipedia
could
generify it, thus preventing the Wikimedia foundation from gaining a trademark on the name at a later date.
NAI ;) But, could WIkipedia be trademark at all as it is generic term?
Noone
can trademark "Cherry Jam" as a name for cherry jam, could anyone
trademark
"Wikipedia" as a name for a Wiki encyclopedia?
Is it a generic term? Coca-cola is fanciful term created by combining two generic terms, coca and cola. Wikipedia is not a word. "wiki" is, I understand, a foreign term meaning "quick" in English. pedia is part of a word. They are combined to form the fanciful "Wikipedia".
As well, the term Wikipedia has been used in the media not to refer to a wiki encyclopedia, but to refer to THE wiki encyclopedia, Wikipedia. There is a well documented use of the word as having its origin on/ through Nupedia (another trademark). This is not a legal opinion, but it appears that Wikipedia has a strong mark that has been created by longstanding and continous usage. If one puts the word Wikipedia into any search engine one receives hits that refer to wikipedia.org, not any other online encylopedia (even other online encyclopedias have articles about Wikipedia).
Using news.google.com today I was informed that there are 55 current news articles that use the word "wikipedia". Not one of these sites uses Wikipedia in any other way besides meaning "the Wikipedia" http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&q=Wikipedia&btnG=Se...
While google also brings up 2,370,000 hits for google, it seems that even other wiki sites see "Wikipedia" as a term that refers to all the online free encyclopedias that are located at the domain wikipedia.org.
It appears there is a strong argument that the name Wikipedia is a fanciful name that is not a word or concept, but a designator of Wikipedia that has a well establish use "in commerce" (that is a legal term of art and has little to do with selling anything) as a fanciful name and mark.
Alex756
Nikola Smolenski wrote:
On Tuesday 14 October 2003 14:20, Imran Ghory wrote:
On Sun, 12 Oct 2003, cprompt wrote:
Don't see any reason to. They're not claiming to be connected to Wikipedia, and Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and all our other sites all list which sites are ours.
IANAL. But, my understand is that general use of the term Wikipedia could generify it, thus preventing the Wikimedia foundation from gaining a trademark on the name at a later date.
NAI ;) But, could WIkipedia be trademark at all as it is generic term? Noone can trademark "Cherry Jam" as a name for cherry jam, could anyone trademark "Wikipedia" as a name for a Wiki encyclopedia?
The claim that "Wikipedia" is a generic term presupposes that others have used it before. Please name some.
Ec
NAI ;) But, could WIkipedia be trademark at all as it is generic term?
Noone
can trademark "Cherry Jam" as a name for cherry jam, could anyone trademark "Wikipedia" as a name for a Wiki encyclopedia?
Yes. You already said what the generic is: "Wiki encyclopedia". Anyone can say they're one of those. Wikipedia is not generic.
-- Jake
On Wednesday 15 October 2003 22:08, Jake Nelson wrote:
NAI ;) But, could WIkipedia be trademark at all as it is generic term?
Noone
can trademark "Cherry Jam" as a name for cherry jam, could anyone trademark "Wikipedia" as a name for a Wiki encyclopedia?
Yes. You already said what the generic is: "Wiki encyclopedia". Anyone can say they're one of those. Wikipedia is not generic.
It just seems as obvious abbreviation to me.
--- Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
On Wednesday 15 October 2003 22:08, Jake Nelson wrote:
NAI ;) But, could WIkipedia be trademark at all
as it is generic term?
Noone
can trademark "Cherry Jam" as a name for cherry
jam, could anyone
trademark "Wikipedia" as a name for a Wiki
encyclopedia?
Yes. You already said what the generic is: "Wiki
encyclopedia". Anyone can
say they're one of those. Wikipedia is not
generic.
It just seems as obvious abbreviation to me.
Xerox is also an abbreviation for xerography, but it's still a trademark. (I think the fact that the word 'xerox' is in common use is irrelavent to this analogy) LDan
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On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Ray Saintonge wrote:
The claim that "Wikipedia" is a generic term presupposes that others have used it before. Please name some.
Technically, not necessarily. If you came first but other people came after, used the name without your permission, and you didn't protest, THEN it's also a generic.
I don't think either applies here.
-Matt
On Wednesday 15 October 2003 21:47, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Nikola Smolenski wrote:
NAI ;) But, could WIkipedia be trademark at all as it is generic term? Noone can trademark "Cherry Jam" as a name for cherry jam, could anyone trademark "Wikipedia" as a name for a Wiki encyclopedia?
The claim that "Wikipedia" is a generic term presupposes that others have used it before. Please name some.
It doesn't, it only presupposes that it is obvious term for a certain kind of product. Probably noone used the term "cucumber jam" for a jam made of cucumbers, because such a jam does not exist, but if it would be made it could not be sold under name "Cucumber Jam" or "Cucumberjam" or "Jam of Cucumbers" etc.
I, of course, agree with Jimbo that if coca-cola is not generic, so isn't Wikipedia...
This discussion should probably be taken over to the new legal discussion list wikilegal-l@wikipedia.org so I am cross posting my response there.
It is generally true that words are not protected under trade mark law, but fanciful concatenation of words parts are "pedia" is not a word, and some might say that neither is "wiki" (though it probably has an emerging meaning when combined with software as in wiki software).
Use of generic words in a TM is also allowable, thus Midas Muffler is a trademark because combined together Midas (name of a god) and Muffler have a fanciful meaning that identifies a company, product, good or service. There are many examples of TMs being created by combination of words.
It is true that a word can become so associated with a particular thing that its use may become generic, this happened with xerox when the term xerox entered the language to mean a copy. It was also once true for Singer which had meant "sewing machine" at one time (no longer true) as in "I am going to fix your torn skirt on my singer."
This can only happen with widespread usage of the term that becomes uncontrollably commonplace. This is not happening for Wikipedia. The Russian folks stopped using the English Wikipedia name (now they have their own Russian name that sort of has a similar meaning, and that may also be protected by the Wikipedia TM).
The only other use has been the term as discovered by LittleDan, that is currently under discussion, i.e. AstroWikipedia. Hopefully we can convince the people who are using Wikipedia that they desist using the name and adopt a different name or become formally associated with Wikipedia. (after we learn what their claim to the name might be).
Alex756
----- Original Message ----- From: "Nikola Smolenski" smolensk@eunet.yu To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 2:04 AM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] AstroWikipedia
On Wednesday 15 October 2003 21:47, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Nikola Smolenski wrote:
NAI ;) But, could WIkipedia be trademark at all as it is generic term? Noone can trademark "Cherry Jam" as a name for cherry jam, could anyone trademark "Wikipedia" as a name for a Wiki encyclopedia?
The claim that "Wikipedia" is a generic term presupposes that others have used it before. Please name some.
It doesn't, it only presupposes that it is obvious term for a certain kind of product. Probably noone used the term "cucumber jam" for a jam made of cucumbers, because such a jam does not exist, but if it would be made it could not be sold under name "Cucumber Jam" or "Cucumberjam" or "Jam of Cucumbers" etc.
I, of course, agree with Jimbo that if coca-cola is not generic, so isn't Wikipedia... _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l