Of course this may not have been clear, but I was suggesting registering Wikimania as the trademark and adding the year for the website. If Wikimania has an actual conflict because someone else has registered it in the European Union, that's something else.
andrea
On 1/6/06, Florence Devouard anthere@wikimedia.org wrote:
mysekurity wrote:
On 1/5/06, *Andrea Forte* <andrea.forte@gmail.com mailto:andrea.forte@gmail.com> wrote:
Seriously, *THE* PREMIER conference of the human-computer interaction world is CHI. Everyone knows to look for it at chi2006.org <http://chi2006.org> this year. It's not a big deal that chi.org <http://chi.org> is taken by something else because the parent site is ACM anyhow. (Just like the parent site for Wikimania would be Wikimedia?) andreaI agree. It really wouldn't be too much of an issue to register Wikimania2006.org http://Wikimania2006.org, and securing the trademark for it wouldn't be too hard, would it?
A little more background/info from Anthere would be most helpful. If there are reasons why this information should not be made public, I will respect that, but please at least dignify this with a better/more complete/less criptic response!
Thank you formally, Adam (a.k.a. Mysekurity)
I asked Soufron to give you an explanation of why it would be best to change the name "from a legal perspective". His answer on juriwiki-l was :
"It's simply that we already lost a few major wikimania domain names. It is also likely that our german friend begun registering wikimania tm in europe. There is a lot of uncertainty around the name wikimania, when choosing a new one could help us ensure that everything will be right and fine. "
This is quite a short explanation, so I asked him if he could detail further. But the point is, I am not sure it is a good idea he explains further... I will try to explain below, but I am not a lawyer, so maybe I will say stupid things. If so, please correct me, it will allow me to understand better as well :-)
Domain names
As I understood, the Wikimania2006 and Wikimania2007 .org domains were secured yesterday *in case* (by a wikipedian, on his/her own money).
If we stick to this kind of idea (why not ?), that means the domain should be registered for many years to come (I mean, each year, one purchase, and this has to be done in advance as the more conferences we do, the highest the chances the domain is taken by someone else). But yes, it is not difficult to register a domain, nor is it very expensive (if we stick to the .org only at least).
Now, yes, the big question is "does it matter or not that we own the domain name ?" I invite the discussion on this. If someone takes all the domain names in .org, .com, .whatever before us, does that matter ?
Tm
Registering a name is not necessarily an easy business. It does not help that it should be registered in several countries (I suppose that once we are registered in USA, Europe, Canada etc... we would be somehow covered), and I presume you would all agree the tm must be protected in more than *just* the USA ? So, that implies several registrations... to do each year (in advance). Besides, registering is not "free", nor even low cost. It costs money, it costs time for the one doing the registration and it takes time to get the mark (about a year and a half at best it seems?). Will we do that every year, to secure WikimaniaXXXX ? I do not think so. Better not counting on it. Let's go one step further : what if we decide to ask the tm nevertheless and someone else oppose it ? What about the costs to fight the opposition ? What about the costs if the other asked wikimania2006 before us, and we have to oppose ?
The next good question might then be : what are the benefits of owning the tm of Wikimania2006 ? Will that be worth the costs and time spend on getting it ? Does it matter that someone else own the trademarks of say Wikimania2006 ? What are the consequences ?
And btw, if someone else own Wikimania, will we be granted Wikimania2008 ?
As you can see, there are "costs" and "benefits" to any decision, sticking to Wikimania, changing to WikimaniaXXXX every year or changing to Wikipapouasi. The benefits may be for everyone. The costs (money, time) will be solely for the Foundation.
Ant
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