[Foundation-l] Trademarks

[George Herbert]

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 12:01 PM, Mike Godwin <mgodwin at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> Anthony writes:
>
>> The fundamental intention of [[trademark dilution]] law is to create a
>> property right.
>
> This isn't an accurate statement about trademark law. It's true that
> trademark law creates certain rights, but to understand trademark law
> as an attempt to create a *property* right is an analytical mistake.

More important than the legalism...

Trademark law exists in order for organizations (businesses,
companies, charities) to avoid having people misrepresent that they
are associated with, or are, the organization.

This can be Chevron preventing a fake gas station from opening up on
some streetcorner, or the Red Cross keeping people from soliciting
money for another charity using their symbols.

In our case - Wikipedia stands for some things (freedom of
information, primarily), and doesn't stand for a bunch of other
things, some of which we are actively against (restrictions on
information and public discussion), and some of which really don't
matter one way or the other (like selling coffee).

Trademark law is the method we have available to prevent fraudulent
association of Wikipedia with things we aren't involved in or
associated with.

I don't want Wikipedia being used to sell Coffee, or shares in Citibank.

I don't mind it being used in association with other free information
projects we have some legit connection with.

Sure, any restriction on use of the logo/name is offensive to a
"information and ideas are completely free" absolutist philosophy.
But if we don't restrict it some, we'll get crap like Wikipedia brand
Dog Food, and that sucks.

Out of all the people in the world, Mike Godwin is probably one of the
best we could have trying to balance out the larger community of
open-information people's interests here.

Picking a fight with Mike over this is essentially arguing that we
should let Wikipedia brand Dog Food run free.  I disagree...

-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com