On Sun, 9 Nov 2003, Shachar Shemesh wrote:The way I understand Trademark law, this will not change much.
Orna Agmon wrote:
On Sun, 9 Nov 2003, Alon Altman wrote:
Hi, The CD designs for the Linux day are available at http://www.haifux.org/newcomers/cd-logo/
Alon
Very pretty. I like the updates design more, though. But- what about RH wishing people to avoid the usage of the trademark RedHat when re-distributing it?
Tux's red hat may be seen to infringe. As far as I understood, however, they don't own any relevant trademarks in Israel. IANALetc.
I'll forward this to Haim to check.
Is this thing already in order? Or does this relate only to the Enterprise edition?
It relates, as far as RH are concerned, to anything under the sun that even remotely resembels their distro.Whether that is actually enforecable is a different matter.
Personally, I don't mind keeping things in the grey area (where our understanding of trademark law says wer'e ok to do it, while their guidelines say wer'e not) just so we can see whether they will sue.
My limited understanding of trademark law says that the art for discs 1
through 3 should be ok, because we are truthfully giving them unmodified
RedHat 9 discs (and therefor RH cannot legally stop us from claiming
that they are RH 9 discs). The use of the red hat on the update disc may
be outside this scope, because it was compiled by us.
There isn't much we can do about it now, perhaps we should add an inner cover to the CD(s) which say something like "redhat is a trademark of... This CD was compiled by haifa linux club..."
Meir.
The idea is this. If I have a trademark on a name or logo, I am the only one allowed to decide what this trademark refers to. What I cannot decide, however, is how this trademark is used.
So, if I have a trademark on the term "Shemesh Linux"(tm) relating to a Linux distribution I'm cooking up, I can (and actually have to) sue anyone who uses the term "Shemesh Linux" in any context which is not the one I intended. For example - if you take my Shemesh Linux distro, and change a couple of things, and then claim that this is "Shemesh Linux" too, I'm well within my rights to tell you to stop doing so. If, however, all you do is publish a review that says how much Shemesh Linux sucks, there is nothing I can do to stop you. You are using my trademark relating exactly to what I defined it to be.
RedHat did an interesting move here, however. They are trying to define the term "RedHat Linux" to mean the services, as well as the actual software. As such, they are claiming that you are not allowed to call anything you did not receive from them "RedHat", as it is not the same deal (even if the software is the same). This does not adapt well to the fact you can download, at no cost and without getting any accompanying services, a free version from their own web site.
It may very well turn out that this is the real reason they stopped the desktop RedHat product line, even though they have, effectively, only switched it's name to "Fedora". This name switching is sufficient that they can have stricter control over the "RedHat" trademark. This is also the reason I think that disc images 1-3 are ok (we are, truely, giving out something RedHat placed their trademark on), while the update disc may not be (this is something we created).
-- Shachar Shemesh Open Source integration consultant Home page & resume - http://www.shemesh.biz/
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