[Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage logo

[MZMcBride]

Craig Franklin wrote:
>I'm sure that the legal team has done their homework on this and would not
>have made this recommendation unless they felt that the WTO had a credible
>argument.  Asking the Foundation to play chicken with the lawyers of a
>major international organisation over a trademark claim on a relatively
>new and easily replaced logo of ours does not offer a very good
>risk/reward ratio in my view.

You mean "has done their homework on this this time," right? The General
Counsel position is one of the oldest in the Wikimedia Foundation and the
Legal and Community Advocacy team certainly existed before the previous
Wikivoyage logo contest. If this were an issue, you'd think someone
would've said something six months ago. And, of course, there's no
shortage of trademark, patent, or copyright trolls in the world. I've seen
both logos and while they're obviously similar, I'm sure there are a great
number of lawyers who could make a number of arguments as to why there's
no real issue here. Anyone can send a cease and desist letter, right?

Presenting a logo selection procedure from a black box and then trying to
pressure the community to accept it as global policy within ten days
doesn't seem appropriate to me. "Ten days" is being very generous, as the
draft procedure is only fully translated into two languages at the moment
and we're fast approaching June 2.

There are also at least a few Wikivoyagers who are concerned that the
active participants of Wikivoyage weren't properly enfranchised during the
last logo contest. That is, there's a concern that the people most
involved with Wikivoyage will get drowned out by the much larger Wikimedia
community in any contest of this nature. This needs further thought,
deliberation, and discussion; however this is being rushed by an
apparently hard deadline from the Wikimedia legal team to change the
Wikivoyage logo no later than July 31. This isn't a great situation to be
in.

I would think some of these issues would be of concern to you. This isn't
about asking anyone to play chicken. It's about ensuring that communities
are free to choose their own identity.

MZMcBride