[Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage logo

[Deryck Chan]

MZM,

"This time" misses the point of risk management - it's all probabilistic
rather than deterministic. It is totally reasonable for WMF to have judged
that the differences between the two logos are large enough that a
trademark claim is sufficiently *unlikely* to happen. But outliers do occur
and in this case WTO chose (against perceived odds) to make a claim. And
it's totally reasonable, too, for the WMF to now judge that the risks of
going to court about this logo isn't worth fighting.

Saying that WMF must've made a mistake last time because they allowed the
logo in the first place but then gave in on the trademark claim simply
misses the point.

Deryck
(Putting his engineer hat on. Ironically engineers typically fight against,
not defend, lawyers when they invoke arguments from statistical science.)
On 1 Jun 2013 15:22, "MZMcBride" <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
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