[Wikimedia-l] Community consultation on trademark practices and Community logo

[Geoff Brigham]

Hi all, We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has
constructively participated in the ongoing trademark practices consultation
that we started several months ago. Please feel free to continue your
participation there, since all issues continue to remain open for
discussion.[1] We would also like to invite community members to join the
ongoing discussion regarding the trademark protection of the Community logo
that we posted on Monday:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Logo/Request_for_consultation.
Our goal is to obtain clear direction from the community on how we should
proceed with respect to the registration of the Community logo and whether
we should pursue a collective membership mark for the community. Our
current consultation is part of an ongoing discussion regarding this logo.
We joined this discussion on the talk page for the Community logo and
Wikimedia thematic organizations.[2] We then initiated a broader discussion
on trademarks in June, where the discussion on the Community logo
continued.[1] That trademark practice discussion remains open and active,
and we have been responding to a wide array of important issues thanks to
community comments. We were first notified this weekend of a potential
opposition to the trademark registration,[3] a proposal not raised earlier
in the community consultation on trademark practices even though the
deadline for the opposition was not until December 22. We accordingly
initiated a community consultation on Monday about how you would like us to
handle this.[4] Indeed, this is consistent with the legal team’s ongoing
efforts over the last two years to include the community in important legal
decisions and policy proposals. We have put a strong emphasis on a close
working relationship with the community, such as in our discussions on the
Terms of Use, the Privacy Policy, the Conflict of Interest Guidelines, the
Legal Fees Assistance Program, the Political Affiliation Policy, and now
the Trademark Policy.[5] In our ongoing consultation regarding the
Community logo, we have asked the community to let us know whether to seek
a collective membership mark (which will help maintain protection against
misuse by others, while allowing free use by community members) or to
abandon the registration of the trademark and its protection by WMF.[4]
Collective membership mark is an idea that we started researching a couple
of months ago in light of community comments in the trademarks discussion.
To be clear, we have no emotional investment in the outcome. This
consultation is the community's opportunity to let us know how the mark
should or should not be protected. As we stated before, we are fine
abandoning the trademark registration to put our limited resources against
other priorities, but this decision belongs to you and the Board [6]. To
ensure full community participation, we have invited users from all across
the world to take part in this and continue to encourage that.[4] Our
actions will be based on the community consultation underway and the Board,
not on an extra-community legal action. We understand that an opposition
against the Community logo trademark has been filed, and we will handle it
as we do all litigation. The litigation deadlines are a non-issue to us
because we will do what the community and Board tell us. Our goal is to
determine the broader community intent through a community consultation
that is open to everyone. If the community and Board tell us that we should
abandon registration, we will do so; if you want it protected, let us know.
Please join in at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Logo/Request_for_consultation
and tell us what you would like us to do. Also please feel free to
participate in the more comprehensive discussion with the
community<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Trademark_practices_discussion>on
trademark practices. Thanks for your thoughts on this,
Geoff <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Geoffbrigham> &
Yana<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:YWelinder_(WMF)>[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Trademark_practices_discussion (trademark
statement) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Trademark_practices_discussion
(trademark discussion) [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Logo
and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_thematic_organizations#Is_it_correct_that_this_is_a_community_logo.3F
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php
?title=Talk%3ACommunity_Logo%2FReclaim_the_Logo&diff=5823947&oldid=5823876
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Logo/Request_for_consultation
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Terms_of_use, https://meta.
wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Privacy_policy,
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Guidelines_on_potential_conflicts_of_interest,
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/Legal_Fees_Assistance_Program,
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/Foundation_Policy_and_Political_Association_Guideline
[6] Board approval is probably necessary since we registered the logo in
light of a Board resolution. After the Community logo was adopted as the
official Meta logo, it was added to the list of Wikimedia logos in
September 2008. In April 2009, the Board of Trustees adopted a
resolution<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Trademark_statement>directing
WMF staff “to register and protect the Wikimedia marks.” The Board can
provide clarification whether we should or should not register the
Community mark based on the results of the community consultation.* *