On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 1:48 AM, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
The license is clear, and wmf is an expert in these licenses . So a previous trademark is void in the respect where it restricts what is defined in the license?
Rupert
I'm sorry, I don't completely understand the question but if I understand it correctly: I do in fact believe that they are experts in these licenses and do in fact know what they are doing here. However copyright law and trademark law are completely independent, you can very easily be allowed to do something under copyright law and not allowed to do it under trademark law (and vice versa) these are completely and utterly independent.
The relicensing of the logos (under copyright law) does not affect the trademark policy or any of the Wikimedia Foundation's rights under trademark law... at all. This is just like the fact that the coca-cola logo may or may not be Public Domain copyright wise does not mean that someone can make a soda, slap the coca-cola logo on it and be safe (or, in fact, sell almost anything with the coca-cola logo on it because it's so widely recognized that it would be confusing even outside of the soda sphere).
Just as an example to be clear: I don't think i've ever seen the foundation send a takedown to someone using our logos under copyright law, they were always sent because someone was abusing the trademark (pretending to be something official for example). Nothing changes about these takedowns, they are still completely enforceable and completely legitimate.
There is no doubt that the distinction between copyright and trademark law can confuse (this is one of the reasons most organizations, including Creative Commons as I said earlier, keep the copyright more restricted) especially since they often use very similar terms (license, intellectual property, registration etc) but in the end it's fairly simple: they do not affect each other. Whether something is copyrighted (or even copyrightable) is completely independent, and unrelated, to whether it is trademarked (or trademarkable).
James