Dear folks,
I was attending a meeting of the Northern California Copyright Society today, and I mentioned to a colleague the discussions we have had on this list and elsewhere regarding whether the Wikimedia logos, which are trademarked, should be freely licensed as copyrighted works. My colleague immediately said this: "Do they realize that if you freely license the trademarked logo, that may be interpreted by a court in trademark litigation as abandonment of the trademark?"
Me: "Well, I've tried to suggest this, but perhaps I haven't said it clearly enough. There's a tendency for some non-lawyers to assume that trademark issues are wholly and necessarily separate from copyright issues."
Colleague: "Well, you'd better tell them that freely licensing the logos might undermine your ability to defend your trademarks in them."
And so, here I am, telling you just that.
Best regards,
--Mike