On 19 Jan 2009, at 21:06, SteveC wrote:
Peter of course knows all of this because he's been repeatedly
bombarding board and team members with threatening emails. It's
unfortunate that his core, often valid, concerns and objections are
so often overtaken by personal attacks and bridge burning exercises.
Saying 'bombarded' is hardly fair. For the record I email the board on
the 23rd Dec and received no reply. I emailed again on the 8th Jan
requesting a response to my earlier email and threatening to object
the following day. I had a response but it was not clear. I requested
clarification on the 13th (no reply), again on the 17th (no reply) and
so today we objected to the application on about the last day that it
was safe to do so given the deadline of the 21st Jan. I did finally
get a list of applications from the team today but only after we
informed them of our actions. I used that information as the basis of
the TradeMark article to which I referred earlier.
Other readers of this list might be interested in the questions I
asked the board in relation to trademark prior to their board meeting
of the 23rd Dec (for which we are still waiting to see the minutes):
---
Have all the trademark applications made by SteveC, or by any other
directors or knowingly being made by any other people associated with
any directors now been transfered to the foundation or withdrawn?
To be clear the trademark 'applications' would be transfered to the
foundation not the successful trademark after award.
These following trade mark applications were still shown as being in
Steve's name as of the 17th December:
UK trademark
"The application for the mark (application number 2500154) has been
Examined, but there is no indication that the application has been
rejected. This does not mean that the mark has necessarily been
accepted for publication (the next stage in the registration
procedure), it could be that the applicant is arguing to overcome the
objections which you mentioned in your e-mail. However, until the
Registrar of Trade Marks formally rejects the application for the mark
we must treat the application as being on-going.
"The application for the logo (application number 2500155) has been
accepted and was advertised with a publication date of 21st November
2008. Third parties now have a period of two months from the
publication date to object to registration of the logo. This period
can be extended by a month by submitting a notice of intention to
object, this does not commit one to making an objection.
Community Trade Mark Application
"One application has been filed on behalf of Steve Coast for the mark
“OpenStreetMap”, again in class 41.
"Once published there will be a three month period from the
publication date for third parties to object to registration of the
mark.
I believe that it imperative that the trademark 'applications' are
transfered and I also believe it is the duty of the directors of the
foundation to protect the assets of the project and to ensure that
this happens. To be clear, should any individual or organisation end
up owning the trademarks in any jurisdiction then the project would
need to request permission from that person to use the trademark and
that request could be confused. Should that person die the assets will
pass with their estate to another person, organisation or possibly end
up intestate. With a project of this scale we should not take that risk.
Could the foundation please establish and publish answers to the
following:
1) In what jurisdictions trademarks have been applied, when were they
applied for and what is the application number in each case.
2) Has the necessary paperwork has been processed to transfer the
applications to the foundation in all cases
3) Has an independent director of the foundation (ie one not linked in
any way to CM) independently confirmed the transfer
If any applications have not already been transferred then they should
be transferred as a matter of urgency and this transfer should be
confirmed as described above.
If people believe I am over reacting, I suggest you glance of this
unpleasant case involving an open source project and a trademark held
in the name of the founder.
"Yesterday, 2008-10-27: 21:00 GMT, just a minute before the regular
TWiki release meeting, the company TWIKI.NET announced unilaterally
that the best for the TWiki.org project would be for them to take over
governance. With it comes a complete lock down of the community site.
From that minute on, all long-time contributors have lost access to
their code. Counter-reaction: the community has left the building,
leaving TWIKI.NET without a contributing community. Question: is it a
sensible move for a venture capital firm that depends on a healthy
Open Source community to lock it out?
"Access to the site is only granted if contributors agree to a set of
newly installed terms and conditions dictated by TWIKI.NET, a company
founded by Peter Thoeny 12 months ago. His power to do so grows out of
two sources: (a) he is the sole owner of the trademark on TWiki and
(b) he is sponsoring the server hardware and thus had root access.
"And now he has triggered the trademark gun and fired the TWiki
community. He even repeatedly threatened people on the #twiki IRC
channel that "[he has] been advised by one of [his] investors, Wilson
Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati, that [they] need to protect [their]
trademark". Clearly, their VC people have no picture of the situation
other than their own return of investment. Sure, protecting a
registered trademark is what it is all about. But threatening the
community that has been working on TWiki on a volunteer basis for the
recent 10 years that way is a bit strong. Too strong for the TWiki
community.
http://blog.wikiring.com/Blog/BlogEntry28
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10078682-16.html
I am not saying SteveC would behave in such a way, but there is a
precedence and I don't like the fact that Wilson Sonsini who were
'investors' in Twiki are now acting for the foundation at the
instruction of SteveC who has a stake in a VC backed business.
For the avoidance of doubt ITO will formally object to the trademark
applications early in the new year unless the situation is clarified
before then.
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