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

[Daniel Mayer]

--- Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Is there an officer who either is tasked with this type of thing or can
> appoint someone to be? A request really needs to come from someone acting as
> an agent of the foundation, and having it come from 50 different wannabies
> is going to be counter-productive.

Having an intellectual property officer was part of my platform in the first
board election. This person would be the official point-of-contact for the
foundation on these matters. I think it is high time we create such a position
as part of the legal department. We *don’t* want to be trademark and copyright
Nazis, but at the same time we do need to have somebody who is tasked with
representing the foundation on these matters when needed (as a final step in
the illegal mirror review process and as one of the first steps in the
trademark protection process; of course, asking nicely at first, yada, yada). 

> 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.

Perhaps. But my gut feeling is that only really applies when a specific work is
commissioned... That is not the case with almost all of what Brion does. He is
pretty much paid to do what he thinks is best (that itself, may or may not be
legal). Either way, copyright ownership is a transferable asset, so if needed
we’d just need to draw-up a contract whereby the foundation gives ownership of
his paid copyrighted work as part of his compensation. 

This is a very important point that we need to work out; if Brion’s work is
owned by the foundation, then the foundation may need to account for that as an
asset (this part of the law confuses me though since some types of software
fall under it and others do not). Since I don’t yet know how to do that and I’m
the CFO, I’d much rather have Brion retain ownership of all his work if it
means less work for me. :-) I wonder how free/open source software companies do
this. For that matter, how the FSF does this since they like to have GNU
software copyright assigned to them (I don’t recall if that means transfer of
ownership). 

-- mav



		
__________________________________ 
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com