Having just visited there, I can say with some confidence that discussion of people refusing to cease using the trademarks is wildly off base. The people at WMF-Brasil are not bad guys. I just spent 3 days there. If there is a problem, I see no obstacles to working it out.
I will be seeing thomas (the main organizer of my trip) the day after thanksgiving in florida.
On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:46, Michael Bimmler wrote:
On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 4:40 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2008/11/24 Nathan nawrich@gmail.com:
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@gmail.com
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