[Foundation-l] Trademarks (Was: A local chapter withoutWikimedians)

[Delirium]

Phil Nash wrote:
> Mike Godwin wrote:
>>> On Nov 24, 2008, at 2:11 PM, Casey Brown wrote:
>>>> Trademarks has been one of Mike's projects for a while now.
>>> That's right.  A very large percentage of my time is devoted to
>>> securing the commercially valuable trademarks we hold and expanding
>>> the jurisdictions in which those trademarks are recognized.
>>>
>>>
>>> --Mike
> 
> I don't want to seem naive but it is unclear to me how this applies to an 
> essentially non-profit organisation; if you can help me out with a link, I'd 
> be grateful. Thanks.

Well, some non-profit organizations are run essentially as businesses 
(charitable mission notwithstanding), often explicitly in for-profit 
holding companies that are subsidiaries of the main organization. For 
example, this is how the Mozilla Corporation operates, and enforces a 
very aggressive trademark policy aimed at monetarily exploiting the 
trademarks it holds.

On the other hand, Mozilla is a somewhat extreme case, and going down 
that path had risks in terms of goodwill, also a valuable commodity for 
donation- and volunteer-driven nonprofits.

I would personally hope that our main interest in the trademarks is not 
their commercial value, but their usefulness in furthering our stated 
charitable mission, by reducing confusion on the part of potential users 
and reusers of our content.

-Mark