This may be an issue that differs by country. Under US law, you don't have to actively defend a copyright, but a trademark can be lost, and become public domain, if it is not actively defended (by giving infringers notice that they are in violation, and, if necessary, suing them for trademark infringement). I don't recall the exact length of time a trademark has to go undefended before the courts will say that it has become a generic term.
For example, the term "yellow pages", meaning a directory of business phone numbers, grouped by category, used to be a trademark of AT&T. Since they took no action when competing companies used the term "yellow pages", the term can now legally be used by anyone. -------Original Email------- Subject :Re: [OSM-talk] Unlicensed use of the logo in iPhone app? >From :mailto:dieterdre...@gmail.com Date :Tue May 17 04:40:29 America/Chicago 2011 2011/5/17 Russ Nelson <nel...@crynwr.com>: > If you don't restrict use, you don't have a trademark -1, you have a trademark when it is registered. This has nothing to do with whether you enforce restricted use or not. You can at any time restrict the use. > But all is not lost. It's still licensed CC-By-SA, so anybody who uses > it has to acknowledge OpenStreetMap. no, he has to acknowledge the creator, which is Ken Vermette, and maybe (depending on the license of the original logo) the creator of the former logo. But all is not lost: of course it will be an implicit acknowledgement of OSM to use the logo --- at least if it comes to a point where it serves for its purpose: beeing a well known trademark (wikipedia: a tm is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an business organization or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or services from those of other entities.) cheers, Martin _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
