This is certainly something that needed clarification, especially regarding current trademark license deals like the one with MandrakeSoft. Thanks God I didn't mention "Wikipedia" was a patented trademark in the draft though I was sur it was ... Anyhow, any kind of trademark license will be clearer and safer with a patented trademark. villy

For clarification, I believe the current situation is that we have submitted the application to register Wikipedia as a trademark in the US. The application was filed last month, but I don't believe it is approved yet, as it still needs to be reviewed by the Patent and Trademark Office and published to see if anyone objects to registration. Actual registration can take up to a year or longer. We certainly consider Wikipedia a trademark, whether registered or not, but I recommend that people be careful not to claim that it is registered at this point.

Once we have the initial registration in place, this should help us expedite other registrations that may be necessary, such as the EU. Based on international agreements, I believe that once the trademark is recognized, additional registrations can be backdated to the earliest registration date.

As far as I know, trademark registration is not necessary in order to register domain names anywhere. However, it may be helpful in recovering squatted domain names.

--Michael Snow _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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