Hi,
There are some things different between Chinese characters and English word.
Every Chinese character has its own meaning. When we translate a foriegn
language into Chinese, sometimes we do it by meaning, but more often we use
characters with similar pronunciation for translation. Wiki is a generic
name, so it can't be a trade mark. In Chinese sphere, wiki can be translate
in many ways. Such as 維基 (now all the Wikimedia projects in Chinese
language, the first one pronunces as "wei", and the second pronunces as
"gee"), 圍紀(first "wei", second "gee"), and 維客(first
"wei" , second "ke")etc.
維基 is one of translations of the word "wiki", and it was chosen by Chinese
Wikipedians to be the only name of Chinese Wikipedia. Before Chinese
Wikipedian's choosing 維基 as the name, there was no famous name of wiki
technology. The problem is "if we don't register 維基, the Chinese Wikipedia
will face the challenge of changing its name (in Chinese)". Wikipedia is one
word, but 維基百科 have 4 characters. In Chinese text trade mark, the
government protect the usage of charater singly.When someone registers 維基,
other people can't use 維基 in their own trade mark. So the situation is not
the same.
THD
在 2006/4/22,Jakob Voss <jakob.voss(a)nichtich.de> 撰寫:
Hi,
We have found an Chinese had registered
"Wiki" and "維基" (in literly it
also means "Wiki" in Chinese) as his trademarks at 2005/11/23 in
mainland
China. Since we now have WP and WN, there might
be some trademark issues
in
mainland China. Do you have any advice or
suggestions that we can do?
There is Trademark in China? ;-) Alawyer should point the Trademark
office to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Wikipedia#Naming and/or
other sources (publications) to show that the name 維基 is used since
long before 2005. According to the Chinese trademark law (Article 11,
paragraph 1 and Chapter V)
http://www.chinaiprlaw.com/english/laws/laws11.htm generic names are not
allowed so you have to prove that Wiki and 維基 are generic names for
special kind of websites that were invented by Ward Cunningham.
Wikimedia Foundation does not have Trademark on Wiki or 維基 neither
because nobody can have a trademark on this.
But I don't know any chinese lawyer. At least you can find out how to
submit a application for adjudication to the Chinese Trademark Review
and Adjudication Board. The best way is to find a chinese lawyer who has
handled such an application before and who is willing to help for free.
Greetings,
Jakob
P.S: In Germany a baker has trademark for "Wiki" for cakes since 1956
but this is ok because Wikis and cakes are different things. Sadly he
does not produce the cakes anymore,I would like to taste it :-)
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l