[Foundation-l] Registering Wikimedia trademarks
Dan Carlson
minutiaeman at st-minutiae.com
Thu Apr 29 00:13:39 UTC 2004
> Have we tried telling them "Wikipedia is a trademark
> of the Wikimedia Foundation" yet?
Like so many others, IANAL, but I've seen statements to the following
effect: "(term one) is a trademark, and (term two) is a registered
trademark, of (company name)." So there's definitely a difference.
I would strongly suggest placing some kind of statement in the
copyright notice of the board, stating that "Wikipedia" is a trademark
of the Wikimedia Foundation. When I first became aware of the project,
I was confused about the definitions of the terms "wikiwiki" and
"Wikipedia" -- for whatever reason, I innocently thought that they were
synonymous. (Kinda like xeroxing is now a common verb, even if you're
not using a Xerox machine.) I even started referring to my own new
Star Trek wiki as "a Star Trek wikipedia". (I of course quickly
changed all uses of that term when the error was pointed out to me!)
I'd just like to point out that, since Wikipedia /is/ the biggest wiki
out there (probably, anyway), then it could just be an innocent
misunderstanding. A statement that Wikipedia is a trademark would go a
long way towards fixing that problem.
Just my 2¢, of course. :-)
Dan Carlson
More information about the foundation-l
mailing list