On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 7:15 PM, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@alice-dsl.net> wrote:

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.

Okay, I guess you're right, because I have two web browsers, one is called Firefox and the other is called Iceweasel, for me, as a user they only differ by the name and logo and there seems to be a reason for this ;).

In fact that is exactly the reason IIRC. The license on the Mozilla trademarks(Logos and Name) were deemed incompatible with Debian's policies so they couldn't be included. Trademark law is even more fun because if you don't protect your trademark, you can lose all rights to it at the same time, so you pretty much HAVE to protect your trademark.

I should clarify I am speaking from the US legal point of view.

Icevamp or Hotvamp instead of Improvisor might be an alternative.

Yes they absolutely could. Pretty much anything that clearly differentiates it as a product so that it cannot be confused with Impro-Visor would be an alternative.

This is much greyer area to tell the truth, and one I won't touch.

I agree, that's why laws are construable, have some margin. It's impossible to factor in every devisable situation.

Everybody seems to understand the GPL and the law after that long discussion for this basic issues. Here is a basic issue, with an unusual exception. I guess even two judges could pronounce two different sentences, in the same town, at the same court.

And this is why I said multiple judges;) Because the ruling of the first one would likely be appealed anyways;)

Seablade