[Foundation-l] The EFF appears to be somewhat upset by the foundation

[Oldak Quill]

2009/4/23 geni <geniice at gmail.com>:
> "Can a noncommercial critical website use the trademark of the entity
> it critiques in its domain name? Surprisingly, it appears that the
> usually open-minded folks at Wikipedia think not."
>
> http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/wikipedia-threatens-
>
> While I would regard the title of the article as misleading this is
> going to be something of a PR problem.
>
> Legally I've not looked at it closely and trademark isn't my thing
> although there may be potential to annoy everyone by arguing that the
> well documented existence of the "wikipedia loves art" err brand means
> there are potential passing off issues.

This is odd. If they it makes clear that wikipediaart.org has nothing
to do with Wikipedia or Wikimedia Foundation, which it does do, it
should be left alone - why not? The project is a non-commercial,
collaborative project which is supposed to comment on Wikipedia.
Certainly, it has no place in article space, and it is odd to think
that, because we are an open, collaborative project, that "anything
goes". But, why are we pursuing them now? As the above poster says, we
have never done anything about Wikipedia Review (to my knowledge) -
which is the right approach. This is especially odd since Wikimedia
Foundation has just announced it is selling branding to Orange. Why
can't a non-commerical, unaffiliated website use the name "Wikipedia"
in commenting about Wikipedia? Is this related to WF's monetisation of
Wikipedia's branding?

-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)