[Wikimedia-l] Free as in Wikimedia Foundation

[Tomasz W. Kozłowski]

Hi community,
I would like to bring to your attention a matter that's currently
being discussed on Meta, one that has not yet gained too much interest
(though it was discussed during IRC office hours, and was mentioned on
one mailing list, as far as I see).

It seems that the Wikimedia Foundation registered a community logo
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Community_Logo.svg> as
a trademark in the United States, with the international application
still pending.

The logo was originally created in 2006 by User:WarX (Artur
Fijałkowski) , and was adopted as the logo of Meta-Wiki in 2008 — and
as far as I can recall, the very point of it being created was to (1)
have a community logo released into the public domain and (2) to have
a community logo which was /not a trademark/.

I am especially worried about the WMF not informing the community
about their trademark registration — we have only found out about it
via an edit on Commons
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=84864201&oldid=49625546>,
and then after asking about it during IRC office hours at the end of
January.

As far as I understand, the WMF has not discussed trademark
registration with the author of the logo
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=92395329&oldid=92392542>
— though obviously, since Artur-WarX released it into the public
domain, it would've only be good manners, and not a legal requirement.

The discussion is taking place on Meta at
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Logo>, and all
comments are welcome.

-- 
Tomasz W. Kozłowski
a.k.a. [[user:odder]]