From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:ogf-l-admin@;opengamingfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Sean Mead Sent: Thursday, October 17, 2002 1:22 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Ogf-l] Trademark in OGC
<< The trademark logo would not become OGC through poor use of the OGL license. Trademarks, whether registered or not registered, are governed by a different body of law from copyright. You can lose your rights in a trademark, but not in the manner described below. >> But this isn't a copyright law issue or a trademark law issue. It's a contract agreement built on top of copyright law. The OGL would never say you lose rights to anything you create; rather, it says you grant a set of rights to others. Not quite the same. Let's ignore the accidental case. Let's talk about the clearest intent possible. I have a document which contains my registered trademark. I declare the entire document OGC, EXPLICITLY INCLUDING the registered trademark. It's still registered. I'm no trademark attorney, but I think it's still a defensible mark. Marks can be lost if you fail to act against unlicensed uses; but someone using it under the OGL is NOT creating an unlicensed use. Yet the OGL specifically forbids using a registered trademark without a SEPARATE agreement. (This clause was primarily created to protect Wizards' trademarks, of course, but it applies to and protects others as well.) So I think a very literal reading of the OGL is that I CAN declare my own trademark as OGC, but you're not allowed to reuse it. I know this is a contradictory and silly example. But it eliminates all questions of "moral/ethical" and "accident" and "unintended", and gets to the core of my confusion. Which is it? 1. A trademark can never be OGC, intentionally or not. 2. A trademark can be OGC, but still cannot be reused (to be precise, you cannot indicate compatibility or co-adaptability with it) without a separate license. 3. A trademark can be OGC, and can thus be freely reused under the OGL without a separate agreement. 4. A trademark declared as OGC becomes indefensible and is lost. I think 1 or 2 is most likely correct. I think you're right that 4 would fly in the face of trademark law. And I think 3 is the troublesome one. If 3 is correct, THEN we have to worry about accidentally declaring a trademark as OGC. Since I don't think 4 can be right, and since 1 and 2 really wouldn't affect the mark, it's 3 that I wonder about. Is it possible that 3 is the correct reading? Martin L. Shoemaker Martin L. Shoemaker Consulting, Software Design and UML Training [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.MartinLShoemaker.com http://www.UMLBootCamp.com _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
