[Foundation-l] A local chapter without Wikimedians

[Michael Bimmler]

On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 4:40 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2008/11/24 Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com>:
>
>> Whether something can be done from afar or not... Beria, Luiz and Porantim
>> are entitled to have the discussion focus at least initially on the specific
>> problem they point out. I suspect that there is very little that can be done
>> - the Foundation, and ChapCom, have almost no control over the operations of
>> any chapter. Even withdrawing permission to use the Wikimedia-related
>> intellectual property (without prejudging the need for that in this case, of
>> course) would need to be backed up in court in Brasil if a chapter refused
>> to comply.
>
>
> I understand that chapter agreements (certainly the WMUKv1 one)
> usually include provision where either side can withdraw from the
> trademark agreement with a few months' notice. Though of course if an
> organisation wasn't happy with that provision being invoked they may
> well be able to argue the point in court.
>

Yeah and, what Nathan probably meant: If a chapter ignores a
termination message and keeps using the trademark, we would need to
obtain an injunction in *their* country. Now, I think the Wikipedia
trademark is not even registered internationally yet (it isn't in
Switzerland, so I suppose it isn't in that many other countries
either), so we'd run into problems. As a matter of fact, the chapter
could just register the trademark in the country and unless the
foundation was willing to really put up a court fight to get the
trademark back, they could just ignore the termination notice.

Contracts are nice, but you also need be able to enforce them.

Michael


-- 
Michael Bimmler
mbimmler at gmail.com