On Wed, 06 Dec 2006, Sean Kellogg wrote: > Trademark law does not care about Debian's technical limitations.
It does only insofar as we are using the trademark in the context of a technical construct. > The functionality doctrine is about real world functional > limitations imposed on tradedress. That's precisely what is at issue here; you're attempting to argue that there is no real world functional limitation imposed by calling the package something other than firefox, and that is quite clearly not the case. The transition package can be called _nothing else_ and still function in the same manner. > As this is neither tradedress nor a real world functional > limitation, it is incorrect to continually invoke this doctrine in > hope that you will convince us otherwise. The fact there is no other way to allow for an automated upgrade process obviates this entire line of argument. Your argument is akin to allowing someone to trademark a specific shape of a light bulb which coveys a functional advantage due to the interaction of the lightbulb and lamp, and then requiring them to redesign the lamp because the design of the lamp brought about a contrived situtation where the bulb design was favorable. > Same goes for Debian Policy. It doesn't limited libability, it just > means the policy authorizes the violation of other's trademarks. The invocation of policy is purely to explain why the package must Depends: and not Recommends: iceweasel; I can conceive of no convincing theory that explains why trademark law would treat a Depends: and Recommends: differently anyway. That there may be a possiblity for someone to bring action under such a theory and possibly prevail is admited; but baring any further action by the Mozilla Foundation I see no reason why we should eviscerate the upgrade functionality at this point in time. That said, after the release of etch, there's no reason to keep the transition package around; I assume that the maintainers were planing on removing it after that point. Don Armstrong -- LEADERSHIP -- A form of self-preservation exhibited by people with autodestructive imaginations in order to ensure that when it comes to the crunch it'll be someone else's bones which go crack and not their own. -- The HipCrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan (John Brunner _Stand On Zanzibar_ p256-7) http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]