> > First of all, one only has to police unauthorized use of the > trademark. One can authorize its use under particular circumstances, > and then those uses don't need to be policed to avoid losing the > trademark. > > That's at the heart of trademark law. A trademark is a form of "Proof of origin". If you see Mickey Mouse in a movie, you can assume it's Disney. This is why you can lose trademarks. If you let people use it for whatever they want then it's not a proof of origin any more.
> Second, trademark law only covers "use in commerce". Use on a personal > webpage would not be covered, and would not have to be policed or risk > losing the mark. Use on a commercial site (which might be broadly > inclusive of, for instance, pages with revenue-generating ads) might > be another matter, if it's seen as implying an endorsement or a claim > to be the product/service the mark names. But... > No you can't. That leads to trademark dilution. > Third, use of the mark in a purely factual manner is not, to my > knowledge, governed by law. So, a store needn't negotiate a license > with Coca Cola Inc. to say they have Coca Cola for sale, at least as > long as they aren't lying. Saying a site is powered by X, when it > really is powered by X, may fall under the same rule, given that > there's no implication that the site *is* X or is endorsed by X. > It is actually the purpose of the law. If you see the Coca Cola logo in a store, you can expect genuine Coca Cola. "Powered by" may or may not count, I don't think it has been tested in a court of law. > Identifying a noncommercial user group as a Clojure user group would > be analogous to identifying a noncommercial Web site as powered by > Clojure, to my mind. Trademark law would not apply, and Rich wouldn't > risk losing the trademark by not sending a lawyer after the group. > It absolutely would. Not sure if it would be fine or not as mentioned above. > However, an earlier post claimed Rich had *copyrighted* the logo, > which is another kettle of fish. Copyright is automatic since 1976. All registration does is having the copyright office they did see your work on a given date. It is by no mean a requirement. > On the one hand there's no need to > police use or risk losing a copyright; on the other, a copyright > covers noncommercial use as well as commercial. I'm not sure how > copyrightable a fairly simple logo design really is, though. There are > circumstances that exempt one from needing a copyright license, "fair > use", that tend to include noncommercial activities that don't harm > the copyright holder's market. If Rich has copyrighted the logo, but > isn't selling copies or cheap licenses to use it, a noncommercial use > might well be found to be a fair use. > Using the logo seems fair use to me. However trademark and copyright laws are independent. You can infringe one one while respecting the other. > Personally, I think it would be silly to block uses of the logo to > refer to Clojure in circumstances that don't imply an endorsement that > doesn't exist, but obviously Rich is not obligated to share my opinion > of what would be silly. I think we would avoid lots of headaches and legal gray areas by having official "powered by" logos. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
