8 Aug
2009
8 Aug
'09
8:52 a.m.
Raymond Martin wrote:
On Friday 07 August 2009 20:53:05 Thomas Vecchione
wrote:
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.
That's right, I mentioned it before, that there is this company, but
they don't have an interest in or don't know about Bob's
"trademark".
Anyway, there is that Firefox vs Icedove fact. The names and logos also
can become a problem for FLOSS. Even if Bob is violating a trademark,
you do it too. But the discussion becomes useless. If anybody isn't fine
with the other, and now I'm talking about Bob and you, than Bob or you
should file a lawsuit. Even if everybody from this list would only back
Bob or just back you, this would not be capable.
Once again forgot to hit Reply-All.
On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 6:41 PM, Ralf Mardorf
<ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net>wrote;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.