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

[Rowan Collins]

On 31/10/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> And anyway, has MediaWiki actually been trademarked? I know Wikimedia
> has, but someone earlier said they couldn't find a trademark for
> MediaWiki when they searched for it in where-ever you search for such
> things...

Just to clarify, terms don't have to "be trademarked" to become a
trademark; they simply have to be decalred (and defended) as such. You
*can* "register" a trademark, and that carries extra weight in various
legal ways, but (as I understand it) something basically becomes a
trademark as soon as you declare it to be one. [Hence superscript TM
for trademark, as well as R in a circle for *registered* trademark]

I believe there *is* some ambiguity over the status of the term
"MediaWiki", though - the place to look is
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_trademarks, although I can't
access it right now - since not all the developers (who collectively
own the copyright to the software, and thus logically its name and
'brand') agree that the Wikimedia Foundation should be considered the
owners of that mark. What that means in terms of "policing" the mark,
I'm not entirely sure...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]