Larry, This seems like a perfectly reasonable approach to me. In the meantime, we will plan to continue under the name "Apache Pivot".
I assume that your office will be responsible for drafting and sending the letter - if this is not correct, please let me know. Also please let us know if there is anything else we need to do or can assist with. Thanks again for your help, Greg On Dec 17, 2009, at 2:58 PM, Lawrence Rosen wrote: > Here's what I wrote earlier this morning: > > Shane Curcuru asked: > > - What are the risks in allowing the Apache Pivot project in keeping > > their name? > > This is not the right question to discuss off the legal-internal list without > explicit attorney-client privilege. > > However, there is nothing stopping us from writing to Microsoft to say: > > We note that you have filed in the USPTO to register a trademark > on "PIVOT" (serial number 77859890). Please be aware that Apache > Software Foundation has been using the trademark PIVOT for our > own software. See http://incubator.apache.org/pivot/. > > Precede this with an appropriate greeting and add a gracious closing. I would > then leave it up to Microsoft's own attorneys to answer your question for > themselves. > > I recommend that such a letter come from me as your attorney directly to the > deputy general counsel of Microsoft (whom I know personally, and since I > don't know the name of the head of their trademark department who reports to > him). I'm sure it will not cause a ruckus, merely careful rethinking of their > trademark application. Another thing it will do is to make Microsoft > attorneys more aware that ASF is a powerhouse of trademarked software. > > Is that what you want? > > /Larry > > > From: Todd Volkert [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2009 11:45 AM > To: [email protected] > Cc: [email protected]; ASF Team PRC; [email protected] > Subject: Re: ASF Board Meeting Summary - December 16, 2009 > > > I would suggest following the advice of counsel (Larry) as a first step. > > Sorry for asking people to repeat themselves, but the only email I saw from > Larry was the "WTF" email (I'm subscribed to legal-discuss, trademarks, and > pivot-dev) -- what advice should we be following? > > -T
