In a message dated 7/4/2006 2:19:14 PM Eastern Daylight Time, wikilegal@inbox.org writes:
This is especially true when an employee of the foundation implies that playing it safe and assuming the foundation does hold a copyright interest and is a publisher is somehow a violation of trademark law.
To be perfectly clear, Anthony, I stated that our name (and logo) are trademarked. That is unquestionable. The books were listed as being created the Foundation, yet we had no knowledge of it. In other words, the publisher used our trademarked name on a book without the agreement of the Foundation. While I am not assuming malicious intent, that is clearly unacceptable. Don't twist what I said.
Danny
On 7/4/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 7/4/2006 2:19:14 PM Eastern Daylight Time, wikilegal@inbox.org writes:
This is especially true when an employee of the foundation implies that playing it safe and assuming the foundation does hold a copyright interest and is a publisher is somehow a violation of trademark law.
To be perfectly clear, Anthony, I stated that our name (and logo) are trademarked.
You stated that Lulu press was infinging upon the foundation's trademark ("A third party, Lulu Press, is using the trademarked name of the Foundation to sell a book. While I believe that they are doing this unwittingly, it nonetheless infringes on our trademark.") and you said that "using the name of the Foundation without the explicit permission of the Foundation" infringes upon the foundation's trademark. The first statement is disputable. The second is outright false.
The books were listed as being created the Foundation, yet we had no knowledge of it.
The foundation was listed as one of the copyright holders. There's certainly a legal argument that that's a true statement.
In other words, the publisher used our trademarked name on a book without the agreement of the Foundation.
They used your name *in* a book, not *on* it. It's certainly not an indisputable legal fact that such use is trademark infringement.
While I am not assuming malicious intent, that is clearly unacceptable.
It's not at all "clearly unacceptable". If Wikimedia wants to be credited, then its name has to be mentioned. Right now [[Wikibooks:Copyrights]] *still* says that trademark law "does not prevent you from giving either Wikibooks or Wikimedia credit for the work by name".
Don't twist what I said.
You said that Lulu was violating your trademark. Again, I'll quote you directly: "A third party, Lulu Press, is using the trademarked name of the Foundation to sell a book. While I believe that they are doing this unwittingly, it nonetheless infringes on our trademark."
Anthony
daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 7/4/2006 2:19:14 PM Eastern Daylight Time, wikilegal@inbox.org writes:
This is especially true when an employee of the foundation implies that playing it safe and assuming the foundation does hold a copyright interest and is a publisher is somehow a violation of trademark law.
To be perfectly clear, Anthony, I stated that our name (and logo) are trademarked. That is unquestionable. The books were listed as being created the Foundation, yet we had no knowledge of it. In other words, the publisher used our trademarked name on a book without the agreement of the Foundation. While I am not assuming malicious intent, that is clearly unacceptable. Don't twist what I said.
Danny
I don't understand how you could not have knowledge of this book when you claim that you were in the middle of delicate negotiations about this specific book. All you didn't have knowledge of was one user taking content on Wikibooks and simply offering it for sale. The claim that the contents were credited with the WMF as a "co-author" or "publisher" has been on the PDF now for almost a year and not disputed until now. Technically "published" on Wikibooks for that whole time.
I am also not exactly clear as to what is unacceptable here. Using the Wikijunior trademark? Acknowledging that the WMF had a part in the creation of the content in this book?
The only thing that might be an issue is if this had claimed to be an "official" print version "authorized" by the WMF, which it didn't.
If the trademark usage is unacceptable, there are other Wikibooks which need to be fixed as well, because this style of usage for invoking the name of the WMF is catching on at Wikibooks. Also, there are legitimate uses of a trademark that don't need permission of the trademark holder. Perhaps we crossed the line here as Wikimedia users, and for that I am asking for some guidelines. Not simply "you went too far, don't go there again", but something a little bit more constructive. I don't see how using the name of the Wikimedia Foundation in the acknowledgements sections of a book is abuse of a trademark.
daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
To be perfectly clear, Anthony, I stated that our name (and logo) are trademarked. That is unquestionable. The books were listed as being created the Foundation, yet we had no knowledge of it. In other words, the publisher used our trademarked name on a book without the agreement of the Foundation. While I am not assuming malicious intent, that is clearly unacceptable. Don't twist what I said.
Trademark law can't be used to prevent statement of facts, though, so all uses of the name are not *necessarily* trademark violations, and as a matter of being nice we shouldn't be draconian about prohibiting people from ever mentioning our name. For example, we ourselves have pages which say a particular article is based on text from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica. That's of course not a violation of the trademarked name "Encyclopaedia Britannica".
The important issue is to avoid giving the impression that the Wikimedia Foundation is publishing or approved of the material. If the use of the name "Wikimedia" or some other Wikimedia-Foundation-trademarked name is clearly done in a factual manner, then it shouldn't be a problem.
As far as legal details go, there doesn't appear to be any strong U.S. legal precedent in this area. Again with the EB1911 example, nobody is really sure where the balance between the right to reprint public-domain material with factual attribution and Britannica's trademark rights lies. So far people have erred on the side of caution by just renaming it, e.g. to "The Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia". This is probably much more cautious than actually required, though.
-Mark
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