I'm inclined to generally agree. There is a likelihood of confusion
between the trademark and the publication, but there are also easily
available techniques for dealing with that. Writing a suitable
disclaimer and linking to it from every extracted article should be more
than enough to satisfy their objections about trademark infringement.
There is another version on line at
.They
suggest (or almost insist) that articles from them be referenced as from
"LoveToKnow 1911 Online Encyclopedia. © 2003, 2004 LoveToKnow." Their
references to the Britannica are restricted to their front page. This
suggests that they may have had similar discussions with them as Project
Gutenberg.
Their claim to copyright may be spurious. The only factor that would
strongly support their claim to originality is the high level of OCR
errors. :-)
Ec
Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
Well, trademark law has limited applications, mainly
to commercial
matters. And I don't see how using the 1911 public domain
encyclopedia can infringe the Britannica trademark. They can pretend
it does, but to sum it up, Britannica is a work, the title of this
work and a trademark.
Once the work is public domain, anybody is entitled to reproduce it
under under its right title since this title is itself part of the work.
Thus, the trademark only protects Britannica from competitive uses
(like if someone tries to launch a Britannica book collection).
Basically, the reproduction Britannica 1911 edition is not using the
trademark Britannica, but the title Britannica.
It is always important to remember that Trademark Law is much more
restrictive than Copyright Law.
I cc Michael Hart in case he remembers anything about this settlement
with Britannica.
Jean-Baptiste Soufron
Le 6 juil. 05 à 14:09, Robert Scott Horning a écrit :
I've come across a potential legal issue that
has an impact across
several Wikimedia projects that I'd like to bring up for general
discussion.
I've been trying to find a home for the 1911 Wikipedia (for more
details, see the new project page), and I've been attempting to move
it to Wikisource, with the following discussion at the Scriptorium:
http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource% 3AScriptorium#1911_Wikipedia
The larger issue I am seeking input from the regulars of this
mailing list is in regards to proper use of registered trademarks
for larger projects. In this case it is how a registered trademark
can be properly used or avoided when a project is tied to something
that inevitably has strong references to registered trademarks.
In this case it is in reference to the 1911 edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannica, where a whole sub project is going to be
based on content from that set of volumes. This issue could also
deal with How-to books in Wikibooks or even Star Trek or Star Wars
trivia entries in Wikipedia, which is again why I'm posting this
issue here rather than other Foundation lists.
In particular for the Encyclopedia Britannica, this issue already
came up with Project Gutenberg where Encyclopedia Britannica's legal
team forced Project Gutenberg into a policy statement. Keep in mind
that prior to this official statement, Project Gutenberg routinely
referenced the associated text with the Encyclopedia Britannica by
name. What resulted was the following:
"The Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia is a reproduction of a 1911
edition of a famous encyclopedia. The text has not been updated.
Although the text is in the public domain in the United States, the
original publisher still has a valid trademark in the original title
of the encyclopedia. The original publisher offered Project
Gutenberg a license to use the trademark, but the terms of the
license were not consistent with the volunteer noncommercial nature
of Project Gutenberg or its primary goal of distributing electronic
text with the fewest possible restrictions. In order to avoid the
possibility of trademark infringement, all references to the
original title and the original publisher have been changed or
deleted. Because of numerous references embodying possible
trademarks, the entire preface has been omitted. The original
publisher of the 1911 print encyclopedia was not and is not involved
in any way with the creation, editing or distribution of the Project
Gutenberg Encyclopedia. Any errors which may have occurred in the
conversion to electronic form can not be attributed in any way to
the original publisher. In order to avoid possible future trademark
infringements or confusion in the minds of the public, this
electronic version should be referred to as the Project Gutenberg
Encyclopedia. The name of the original print encyclopedia should not
be used in any way in connection with this electronic text."
I am suggesting that the Wikimedia Foundation follow the lead of
Project Gutenberg in this case and try to avoid implied endorsement
by also avoiding the use of registered trademarks when possible.
The real question then is how and in what cases should registered
trademarks be omitted? Obviously there shouldn't be much of a
problem for a Wikipedia article about a company, but it gets into
grey areas when you get into a collection of articles that could be
refered to by using a registered trademark, such as Ford mussle cars
or kinds of SPAM.
Obviously each Wikimedia project will end up having to deal with
this issue independently on the fine points, but it wouldn't hurt to
establish some general policy guidelines either. Any general
assistance would be appreciated.