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(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. 
 
 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.