[Foundation-l] Wikipedia trademark being used incorrectly

Rowan Collins rowan.collins at gmail.com
Fri Nov 19 15:27:01 UTC 2004


On Fri, 19 Nov 2004, Delirium wrote:
> Well, I do think Wikimedia has picked a rather poor naming scheme in
> terms of enforcing a unique brand, although I'm not sure what to best do
> about it.  The scheme is essentially Wiki____, where the ____ is the
> project-specific name, but that's a completely generic naming scheme,
> because we are not the inventors, owners, or exclusive users of the
> prefix "wiki".  This leads to a confusing situation where an arbitrary
> Wiki____ may or may not be a Wikimedia project, and there's no way of
> knowing without investigating.

Yes, I'd have to agree there - although I'd tend to say "ended up
with" rather than "picked", given the way the names have come about.
But in a way, this makes it even *more* important that we protect the
individual terms that *are* part of the Foundation. There's nothing we
can do about a site calling itself "Wikitravel", but at least we can
draw the line at someone starting a "Wikipediatravel" or somesuch
(which would actually sound more like part of the same brand than
"Wikibooks" does...)

-- 
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]



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