On Tue, 2009-01-27 at 14:49 +1100, njh wrote:
On Mon, 26 Jan 2009, Ted Gould wrote:
> Thoughts after that will be to get a usage policy built that is fairly
> simple but ensures that Adobe can't make "Adobe Inkscape" without
asking
> us first :)
This is extremely unlikely. On the presumption that such a lawyer thing
costs real money, perhaps you should to a threat analysis to determine
what the real legal threats are to inkscape. I would suggest the
accidental inclusion of patented or incorrectly licenced code is far more
likely a problem, and such time would be better spent on that.
Realistically, a large corp wouldn't want the bad pr that came from
stealing a well known name (and would most likely be immune from attack).
Small operators rebadging inkscape or using the name are not worth the
effort/cost of attacking - inkscape is a very well known brand and people
would quickly socially discourage such behaviour.
Yes, the cost is pretty low actually (about $500). And what I'm more
worried about is small actors more than large corporations. Some guy
decides he's going to make some money be licensing the Inkscape
trademark and selling it back to us, or some such thing. Sure, we could
probably defend it in common usage, but that'd be very expensive while
the cost of just trademarking it is very cheap.
I'd agree that probably one of the bigger problems we could have is
dealing with incorrectly licensed or patented code. But, that's much
more expensive to determine, and something that I think we can be
reasonably reactive to. If someone sends us a cease-and-desist we can
remove the code or determine it's status at that time.
--Ted