[CentOS] Re: Linux Trademarked?

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 19:11 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
> That was, I think, the concern of the OP.

Again, the mark in trade.

If you signed an agreement for private code that forbid your company
from showing any lineage to the original owner, that's 100% different.
Specific, written agreements between two parties are far more
enforceable because they are explicitly defined.

> I have said nothing about Red Hat. I am not frustrated.

Okay, that's just what most of these have boiled down to in the
past.  ;->

> I'm not a lawyer. I only know that I was at a company which used
> a term in source comments which another company later trademarked.
> We were forced to change those comments in source to remove the
> use of the trademarked sign. This was in source which was not
> distributed (except to contractors who helped maintain it, under
> NDA).

Did your company have a written agreement?  Most companies put extensive
trademark restrictions in written agreements to prevent their company
from being blamed by changes in the derivative.

> So, I think that the concern about possible conflict with GPLed
> code is not an unreasonable one.

There is no conflict.  If Linus got that anal (if he even could legally
under US, among other jurisdiction, common law on trademarks), the
simple solution is to fork the project and yank all the names out.  That
would be the end of it, which is allowed under the GPL.

> Anyone who wanted to distribute
> the source to the kernel might be required to remove the
> trademarked sign first, or at least to change it to Linux(R)
> somewhere and explain who held the trademark in each file
> where it first occurred.

I'd really like to see that tested under US common law on trademarks
when there is no written agreement in place.

> Why would anyone be frustrated with the Red Had(R) Corporation?

It's just come up a lot of times on this list.  After hearing a lot of
people bitch and moan about Red Hat(R) Linux because they used a Cobalt
product, I had absolutely 0% problem with Red Hat when they put an end
to it after Sun forced them.  I still hear about how "bad" Red Hat(R)
Linux was, or how "uncontrolled" it was, based on the Cobalt products.

-- 
Bryan J. Smith     b.j.smith at ieee.org     http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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