Dear Joaquim,
I'm referring your query to the person in charge of our trademark
portfolio, Alisa Key, who is cc'd on this message. Alisa, can you
advise Joaquim and Wikimedia Brasil as to how you would want to go
forward from here?
--Mike
On Dec 17, 2008, at 6:40 PM, Joaquim Mariano da Costa Neto wrote:
Dear Michael Godwin,
I am a Brazilian wikipedian and I am beginning to work with our
team of local volunteers. I am writing to inform you some issues
related to trademarks that may belong to the Wikimedia Foundation.
In Brazil, the Industrial Property National Institute (INPI -
Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Industrial) is the federal
department in charge of registering and controlling the intellectual
property (which includes trademarks).
Yesterday, after a brief research at the INPI website, I found
that two Brazilian companies are trying to register at INPI some
trademarks that may belong to the Wikimedia Foundation. In 2006 and
2007, these two companies filed at the INPI the requests for
registering the following trademarks:
www.wikipedia.com.br and
wikipédia. It is important to notice that one of the companies is
not trying to register the domain wikipedia.com.br: the company is
just trying to register a trademark that uses the
expressionwww.wikipedia.com.br (with a specific logotype). I list
below the trademarks that may belong to the Wikimedia Foundation and
the names of the respective companies that filed the related
requests for registering (with the INPI file numbers and the dates
of request in round brackets):
-
www.wikipedia.com.br - Web Use Serviços Ltda. ME (900080442)
(10.nov.2006)
- wikipédia - Wikipédia Distribuição de Conteúdo Eletrônico Ltda.
(900632860) (29.nov.2007)
The Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br - Comitê
Gestor da Internet no Brasil) is the Brazilian federal department in
charge of registering and controlling the Brazilian Internet
domains, with jurisdiction over the country code top-level domain
designated for Brazil (.br). The CGI.br (which is not related to the
INPI) made the domain wikipedia.com.br unavailable for any entity
other than Wikipedia. Therefore, the current problem is not related
to the registration of the domain, but to the registration of the
trademark that uses the expression
www.wikipedia.com.br.
The requests in question are still in analysis and the INPI did
not decided to concede or refuse the registrations.
The Brazilian law states that the request for registering a
trademark may be opposed by proving that similar or identical
trademark already exists and is legally registered. In other words,
the Wikimedia Foundation may oppose the requests filed by the above-
mentioned companies at INPI.
After the concession, the registration may also be made null and
void by proving that similar or identical trademark exists and had
been legally registered before the request was filed.
If you need any further clarification, feel free to contact us.
We are at your disposal to help.
Kind regards,
Joaquim Mariano da Costa Neto
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