I have received the following formal response from our legal/copyright team:
"BlackBerry is not asserting any rights in RIPPLE and makes no representations or warranties with respect to the name as a trademark." The wording is specifically chosen, and I hope it will suffice for your needs. Please let me know if you have any further questions or needs. -- Ken Wallis Senior Product Manager Office: +1 (925) 931-6024 BlackBerry: (415) 860-3980 [email protected] BlackBerry Corporation -----Original Message----- From: Parashuram N [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, December 6, 2015 10:28 PM To: Ken Wallis <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: RE: Trademark use after retirement Thank you Shane. Ken, Thank you for volunteering to help with the trademark for using the name "Ripple". Is there a way we can be granted a formal permission from Blackberry to use the name "Ripple" ? -----Original Message----- From: Shane Curcuru [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2015 12:24 PM To: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: Trademark use after retirement (Note mixed private/public lists) Please treat Ripple as an Apache trademark until the IPMC formally retires the podling - i.e. until that vote is completed, meaning that organizationally the ASF has recognized the podling is retiring. Given that there's been ample discussion here within the Ripple community at Apache, and that some of the members here wish to continue development elsewhere using the name, the ASF will have no objection to future developers calling software derived from this project "Ripple". Don't call it "Apache" obviously, and we would appreciate a footer "based on the retired Apache Ripple podling" or something similar. I'm also happy if the IPMC chooses to put a note on whatever archive the ASF hosts for the retired podling that points to the successor project. It looks like Ken elsethread can help confirm that RIM/Blackberry won't have any problems with this either, so hopefully you'll be all set! It's important for the ASF to defend all Apache project and podling trademarks to ensure that we maintain our reputation for independently governed projects. This is especially important in some other kinds of cases, where other companies may try to manipulate our podlings or projects unfairly. But in cases where the community tries, but just doesn't succeed at incubation, the ASF has no wishes to get in the way of the community trying their luck elsewhere. Good luck, by the way! - Shane Parashuram N wrote on 12/1/15 2:29 PM: ... > -----Original Message----- From: Ross Gardler > [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, November 30, 2015 > 10:14 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Trademark use > after retirement > > As can be seen in recent discussions the Ripple project will be > retired as an Incubating Apache project. During the discussion the > status of the Ripple trademark was one question that came up. I > responded that if anyone wants to use the mark they would need > permission from whoever owns the mark. In my preliminary evaluation of > the status of the mark it did not appear that it had been transferred > to the ASF on entry into the Incubator (which is the usual case). > > If anyone in the community wants to reuse this mark you need to > confirm with [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> that > the ASF does not own the mark and, once confirmed, approach the > trademark owner (Blackberry I believe). Under no circumstances should > anyone use the Ripple name without obtaining permission. > > The code, however, can be taken under the Apache License V2 and worked > on elsewhere if you so desire. > > Ross >
