Google Open Sources Trademarks With the Open Usage Commons (zdnet.com) 6
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Google has announced it is launching a new organization, Open Usage Commons (OUC), to host the trademarks for three of its most important new open-source projects. These are Angular, a web application framework for mobile and desktop; Gerrit, a web-based team code-collaboration tool; and Istio, a popular open mesh platform to connect, manage, and secure microservices. While it only covers three Google projects, for now, OUC is meant to give open-source projects a neutral, independent home for their project trademarks. The organization will also assist with conformance testing, establishing mark usage guidelines, and handling trademark usage issues. The organization will not provide services that are outside the realm of usage, such as technical mentorship, community management, project events, or project marketing. "Having an entity like this does make some sense for a certain number of use cases," says Andrew "Andy" Updegrove, open-source standards and patent expert and founding partner of top-technology law firm Gesmer Updegrove. "The most obvious one is an unincorporated OSS project. An amorphous group of individuals can't own a trademark efficiently, so there's no way to protect the project name unless they agree on a singular owner. There are many cases where an individual member has owned a project mark, and that has often led to downstream problems. So simply having a neutral owner is a community good without going any farther than that."
Updegrove also said noted trademarks have usually been achieved by a project "approaching a host, like The Apache Foundation or Linux Foundation and asking them to take over as host. But that usually requires taking the project under the umbrella, and subject to the rules, of that foundation."
Updegrove wonders if there's "more to the story than meets the eye." He notes there is one important difference by only handing over the trademarks: "A project that is primarily important to a single vendor and primarily staffed and controlled by developers employed by that employer can continue to exercise effective control while avoiding the market suspicion that might arise if the vendor owned the mark." He suspects Google is doing this "to up the credibility of some of its projects [to the open-source community] while not taking the more extreme step of turning the project over to a foundation in connection with which a new and more independent governance structure is put in place."
Updegrove also said noted trademarks have usually been achieved by a project "approaching a host, like The Apache Foundation or Linux Foundation and asking them to take over as host. But that usually requires taking the project under the umbrella, and subject to the rules, of that foundation."
Updegrove wonders if there's "more to the story than meets the eye." He notes there is one important difference by only handing over the trademarks: "A project that is primarily important to a single vendor and primarily staffed and controlled by developers employed by that employer can continue to exercise effective control while avoiding the market suspicion that might arise if the vendor owned the mark." He suspects Google is doing this "to up the credibility of some of its projects [to the open-source community] while not taking the more extreme step of turning the project over to a foundation in connection with which a new and more independent governance structure is put in place."
Just more “embrace, extend” (Score:3)
Trademarks??? (Score:2)
The peculiarity of trademark law is that if you don't defend the trademark you lose it. What does this mean for an Open Source project? Who's going to pay for the trademark defense? What standing do they have? Etc. I suppose Google could pick up the tab, but that's going to mean they're pretty much still in control of what those projects do.
Is it just me, or (Score:2)
Does anyone notice that an article like this which requires industry knowlege and insight to comment on gathers much fewer comments than an emonionally charged coronavirus article, or politically or racially charged article, all which ellicit hoards of expert (*cough*) opinion?
Gee, it's almost as if slashdot has become... an opinion-baiting feeding frenzy comment pool? Or feel free to provide your own description below...
Oh and that last paragraph in the post, and the first reply in the comments... unrelate
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe...
Or this topic just isn’t that novel. It’s basically been done before. Besides discussing whether google is evil or not... or maybe the ins and outs of trademark law?
Re: (Score:2)
Good idea, but how long will it last? (Score:2)
After Google pulls funding in a year or two as required by their "Hype It Now, Abandon It Later" business philosophy.