[LAD] Impro-Visor created on sourceforge

[Raymond Martin]

On Friday 07 August 2009 20:53:05 Thomas Vecchione wrote:
> Once again forgot to hit Reply-All.
>
> On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 6:41 PM, Ralf Mardorf 
<ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net>wrote:
> > I'm not interested to take sides, I only want to learn about the GPL.
> >
> > Assumed that Miss B. forks a GPL'd project, as far as I understand the
> > GPL, Miss R. is allowed to fork a project with a similar name, similar
> > function, based on the open source code of Miss B. and if Miss B. had no
> > time to open the source code, because she was in the manicure salon, but
> > Miss B. accepted the GPL, e.g. a mailing list for manicure software can
> > witness this, than Miss R. is allowed to decompile the software of Miss
> > B.. Am I wrong?
>
> You are confusing Copyright and Trademark Law.  Copyright law says that yes
> they can fork the project.
>
> Trademark Law however says that Miss B. is allowed to follow up legally to
> prevent a trademark, which can be registered or unregistered, from being
> confused by another similar trademark that might be confused with it.  The
> fact that the trademark is similar, and the product is similar, is doubly
> damning in that case.

Then you should talk to Bob Keller for violating the trademark of that real
company that has a possible trademark infringement case against him
first.

Think before you write.

Raymond