[WikiEN-l] Firefox (was Re: Wikipedia: The Missing Manual (O'Reilly, Dec 2007))

[William Pietri]

Anthony wrote:
> On 10/21/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> If there is something we could do to encourage O'Reilly to relicense
>> the book in a free manner (they have a history of doing so, I think I
>> read), it would be worth doing. I don't think attempting to block them
>> using "Wikipedia" would achieve this and would cast us in a bad light
>> (a free/open project using trademark law to stop our name being used).
>>
>>     
> I think it comes down to whether or not there's a legal case or not.
> Would it cast us in a bad light to use copyright law to stop our
> content from being used in a proprietary work?  Why should trademark
> law be any different?
>   

The difference is in righting an actual wrong.

The guy wrote a book telling people how to use Wikipedia well. That's 
awesome, and we should encourage that. He did nothing wrong, and the 
notion that merely mentioning the name Wikipedia entitles us to take his 
work from him is ridiculous.

Trademarks are there to prevent parasites from tricking consumers into 
buying things under false pretenses. If the cover featured our logo, 
claimed that it was an official Wikipedia guide, and had a fake 
approved-by-Jimmy-Wales graphic, that would be a problem. But this is 
part of a recognizable series, is obviously branded as an O'Reilly book, 
and makes no claim to be associated with us. There is no problem here.

We should be sending the guy flowers and candy, not serving legal papers.

William



-- 
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri