[Foundation-l] Wikipedia trade mark misuse

Tim Landscheidt tim at tim-landscheidt.de
Sun Jun 13 18:04:49 UTC 2010


Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:

>>> You are aware of [[en:Wiki]] for a history of wikis and
>>> WMF's part in it?

>> In other words, the use of "wiki" predates wikipedia (wikipedia gets
>> its name since it was a encyclopedia using the wiki system)

> I think everyone in this conversation is aware of that. Jiri said they
> were calling it "Wiki" despite it not actually being a wiki, which
> strongly suggests they are trying to associate it with Wikipedia
> (which is very commonly abbreviated to "Wiki" despite our attempts to
> discourage it). Whether it goes far enough to be a violation is for
> the lawyers to work out - I'm not going to guess (I think it is Czech
> law that is relevant, and I don't know anything about it - there is a
> lot of consistency between trademark law in EU member states, but I'm
> not sure of the details).

But that's most likely not a trademark issue. There are doz-
ens of cola brands on the market and few feature extracts of
the kola nut, but that doesn't mean that it is Coca-Cola's
right or duty to take legal action on a trademark basis.

Tim





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