Inkscape name/logo trademarking
Hey all,
I got of the phone from the lawyer from SFLC and they're going to help us in trademarking the logo and name. I just wanted to write an e-mail to make sure I'm not screwing it up :)
Name: Inkscape Phrase: Draw Freely Logo: /usr/share/inkscape/icons/inkscape.svg
They are going to do a trademark search to ensure that no one else has trademarked anything similar (to the point where we'd need to differentiate) and come up with a "category" for us to file in (I'm guessing it'll be "computer graphics").
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 :)
Any issues?
--Ted
On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 03:00:56PM -0600, Ted Gould wrote:
Hey all,
I got of the phone from the lawyer from SFLC and they're going to help us in trademarking the logo and name. I just wanted to write an e-mail to make sure I'm not screwing it up :)
Name: Inkscape Phrase: Draw Freely Logo: /usr/share/inkscape/icons/inkscape.svg
They are going to do a trademark search to ensure that no one else has trademarked anything similar (to the point where we'd need to differentiate) and come up with a "category" for us to file in (I'm guessing it'll be "computer graphics").
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 :)
Any issues?
Sounds good to me!
Bryce
On Jan 26, 2009, at 1:00 PM, 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 :)
Any issues?
Ice Weasel
:-(
Probably just want to be sure to look at that situation to see if there are any pitfalls we might need to watch out for.
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.
njh
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
participants (4)
-
Bryce Harrington -
Jon A. Cruz -
njh -
Ted Gould