[Foundation-l] Trademarks

[Tomasz Ganicz]

2008/11/25 Mike Godwin <mgodwin at wikimedia.org>:

> Without criticizing Mozilla at all, I'll note that we're not that much
> like Mozilla in the scale on which license trademarks commercially.
> It's probably difficult for anyone outside the Foundation to imagine
> the sheer number of licensing opportunities we turn down on a daily or
> weekly basis. I've also been told that, in comparison to other
> nonprofits that hold commercially valuable trademarks, we're
> remarkably *un*aggressive in policing them.  You might almost think
> the Foundation's legal strategy were being run by a free-speech lawyer.
>

Yes.. Actually it works in such a way, that if you ask for permission
to use any Wikimedia logo you get negative answer as long as you do
not persuade guys form San Francisco office that it is in line with
their idea what is OK and what not. Persuading them is a kind of game
with hidden rules. They keep the rules of obtaining the permission in
their heads and do not communicate it directly to you. You just have
to find these rules in a trial and error process.

On the other hand there is nobody to seek actively for trademark
violations.  If you tell guys from the office about abuse and this is
serious thing in terms of business scale, you may expect some legal
action to be taken. However if you do not ask for permission and
simply do what you feel is OK there is quite high probability that
nobody catch you, as long as your business is not very large.

If it is clever trademark management I don't know.. Maybe there is
some sort of logic in this, but I am probably not smart enough to see
it :-)



-- 
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html