[Juriwiki-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Trademark violation of our 'MediaWiki' mark

[Jean-Baptiste Soufron]

But there is no necessary link between the copyright of Wikimedia and 
its trademark : the foundation can very well get the trademark without 
being its author. We should not confuse these issues.

But we must wait for the trademark to be properly registered before 
going any further.

 From what I understood, ATR is on it and it should be done soon.

As soon as it is properly done, we should politely ask people to mention 
the fact that Wikimedia is a registered trademark.

Jean-Baptiste Soufron, juriwiki-l
cersa-cnrs paris 2

Brion Vibber wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>> On 10/31/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> By default that is standard practice. But I don't know if that was the
>>> understanding between Brion and Jimmy. You'll need to ask them to make
>>> that point clear.
>>
>> According to the US Code, a work made by an employee within the scope 
>> of his
>> employment is *always* a work made for hire. The copyright may have been
>> transfered (and that transfer can be terminated after 35 years), but 
>> AFAIK
>> you can't change the authorship of a work.
>>
>> Of course, to further confuse things, WikiMedia may very well be a 
>> work of
>> joint authorship, and in that case Brion is probably one of the joint
>> authors along with the WMF.
> 
> 1) I am not the sole author of MediaWiki, I'm just one of several people
> who's worked on it.
> 
> 2) My work on MediaWiki antedates my employment with Wikimedia, so
> Wikimedia can make no claim on my prior contributions.
> 
> 3) The verbal agreement Jimmy and I made was that I would continue to
> retain copyright to software contributions I make during my employment.
> 
> 4) As far as I know, the Foundation has no copyright interest in
> MediaWiki. Some contributors have renounced their copyright interest, so
> fragments here and there may be public domain. ;)
> 
> 5) The Foundation may own the trademark on the name MediaWiki, which
> postdates the creation of the software itself.
> 
> 6) A trademark registration for the mark was filed last year on behalf
> of the foundation, though it hasn't totally gone through yet. (I'm not
> the person to ask for details on that.)
> 
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> 
> 
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