Linux Trademark Fun Continues

Orre noted an article running on internetnews about LMI's efforts to license the Linux trademark to companies that use it. Prices range from $200 to $5k for companies with over a million bucks in revenue.

Re:Why charge for it?

[enodev]

because lmi tries to get self sufficient. currently they lose money (lawyers, etc.).

Linus Torvalds explains it

[enodev]

To prevent more FUD being spread, please read

http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95 [lkml.org]

Re:Laws

[duffbeer703]

The trademark just means that you cannot call yourself "Linux".

If you call your distro "Swaziland Linux", you need to buy a license.

If you call your distro "Swazilandix" or "Swaziland Operating Environment", etc, you don't need any license at all.

If you start selling soda and call it KevinConaway Coke, you need a license from Coca-Cola. If you call it KevinConaway's Cola, you're ok.

Trademarks are different than patents or copyrights. They exist to protect the integrity of a brand -- not the ideas.

Re:Red Hat doesn't have a license

[TurdTapper]

Red Hat doesn't have one because they aren't using 'Linux' in their name. It's Red Hat, Inc.

Re:The trouble with 'free'

[Agret]

It's only if you are using the Linux name on something that is earning money. It is the name you pay for. You don't have to pay for it but if someone else gets a license for the same copyright as your name they can send a cease and desist. You are buying protection.

The trademark owner

[ImaLamer]

From TFA:

On January 18th 2000, Torvalds, in an e-mail to the Linux kernel developers list, explained the need to protect the Linux trademark.

At the time, Torvalds noted: "Trademark law requires that the trademark owner police the use of the trademark."

The e-mail:
http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0001 .2/0646.html [iu.edu]

Re:Why charge for it?

[n0-0p]

There are several reasons why that approach won't work. This groklaw post [groklaw.net] covers the issues very thoroughly.

Re:So I guess...

[gnasher719]

As has been explained at great lengths on groklaw, you are absolutely free for example to make a Linux distribution named "Knoppix" without having to pay anything, and obviously you are allowed to say "Knoppix is a Linux (R) distribution. Linux (R) is a registered trademark of the owner of the Linux trademark."

You are not allowed to create a distribution and call it "Knoppix Linux" without paying for the trademark. And Microsoft is not allowed to distribute "Microsoft Linux" without paying for the trademark. And once Linux takes over the computing world, Microsoft will not be allowed to rename "Vista" to "Linux" and distribute it as "Microsoft Linux" at all, in order to retain a tiny bit of market share, because Linus can refuse to let anyone use "Linux" in a product name if it isn't Linux what they are selling.

Re:The trouble with 'free'

[VP]

Trademark law is different from copyright law. The fact that in the US the same governmental agency handles both doesn't make them the same.

The software is free, and you don't have to pay to use it. If you want to register a trademark which contains "Linux" in it, then you need to license the use of "Linux".

Re:Huh

[tha_mink]

I guess information wants to be free, but not as in beer.

You can have Linux for free still, you just can't use the name in your product/service/name etc, without paying for the privilege. It's still free.

A/C trolls /.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus also said:

"[ And don't get me wrong - I follow slashdot too, exactly because it's fun
    to see people argue. I'm not complaining ;]"

Since it's now salshdotted, see http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:HR1UTE7bLf0J:l kml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95+&hl=en [72.14.207.104] [Google cache}

Re:Huh

[ucahg]

[i]I guess information wants to be free, but not as in beer.[/i]

A trademark is hardly 'Information' in the sense of the word that free software advocates would purport it.

Consider if Microsoft created a terrible linux distro purposely, and called it Ubuntu, and marketed it as Ubuntu (not assocaited with MS) on the web. The people over at the real Ubuntu would want to fight back. That's the power of the trademark, it protects your name and image, not your 'information'.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Red Hat doesn't have a license

[n0-0p]

If you had a valid sublicense before August 2004 you are grandfathered in for free. Based on that I expect that Red Hat doesn't have to purchase a license at all. Perhaps Novell did need to purchase a license due to Suse changing hands, or maybe they just chose to opt in and avoid any potential hassle. After all, the cost is quite negligible for them.

The big deal

[VP]

The big deal in Australia is that Jeremy Malcolm sent the letter to people and companies who have no intentions to use Linux as part of their product names, service names or brands. They had mentioned Linux as one of the platforms their products run on, yet they still got a letter. The letter was also worded poorly (think RIAA-type legalese), that is why the whole uproar started.

I hope Linus, Maddog, and LMI understand that they need to control how the enforcement of the mark is done before they let seemingly well-intentioned lawyers take a short cut and mass-mail a hard-to-comprehend legal form...

Re:To end this for once and for all

[cpt kangarooski]

I only disagree with one thing: A trademark does not garantee quality at the moment of rewarding the trademark. You only know that the product sucked when the trademark is revoked because of bad quality.

No, a trademark is essentially a stand-in for quality. A customer can know, based on the mark, that drinks branded as Coke will have a particular taste; that cars branded as Yugos will suck.

If these expectations aren't met, due to quality standards that vary (either way) among identically-branded goods, then the trademark is no longer serving its purpose. Then bad things happen to the mark holder's rights.

This is why it is critical that trademark licenses include quality control standards and auditing. If Linus isn't spot-checking licensees, and making sure that their software is still basically Linux, and not significantly different, and revoking licenses where these standards aren't met, his rights are in jeopardy. In fact, failure to include provisions for doing this will harm him right off the bat.

Re:Why charge for it?

[Pecisk]

non-profit != without money

Non-profit also means that you spend as much as you get.

But for correction please read Linus mail to lkml list, it provides lot of details and destroys this oversensational post and articles which caused that.
It is simple - if you are non-profit and want to call your product 'My Linux Babe', you can do it - just you won't get ANY protection when someone also takes this title. BUT if you are sublicenser of trademark "Linux", then your title is also protected.

It is clear I guess as that.

Remember William Della Croce, Jr. ???

[linuxguy]

Most of you probably do not remember him. He fraudulently registered the Linux trademark in 1996 and asked people to pay for use of the name "Linux".

Many of you now seem to think the name Linux does not need to be protected. You either have short memory or are too young to know what battles Linus had to fight to get here.

Most of you are free-loaders anyway. Interested only in what you are getting for free and contributing nothing back. Most of you given half the chance would have really cashed out on Linux, unlike Linus Torvalds.

See: http://www2.linuxjournal.com/article/2425 [linuxjournal.com] for some of the history.

Re:GNU, GNU, and GNU

[Master of Transhuman]

Go here: http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Tradem arks.html [gnu.org] which says the following:

2.3 Trademarks

Please do not include any trademark acknowledgements in GNU software packages or documentation.

Trademark acknowledgements are the statements that such-and-such is a trademark of so-and-so. The GNU Project has no objection to the basic idea of trademarks, but these acknowledgements feel like kowtowing, and there is no legal requirement for them, so we don't use them.

What is legally required, as regards other people's trademarks, is to avoid using them in ways which a reader might reasonably understand as naming or labeling our own programs or activities. For example, since "Objective C" is (or at least was) a trademark, we made sure to say that we provide a "compiler for the Objective C language" rather than an "Objective C compiler". The latter would have been meant as a shorter way of saying the former, but it does not explicitly state the relationship, so it could be misinterpreted as using "Objective C" as a label for the compiler rather than for the language.