Uruguayan SuSE Reseller Trying to Trademark Linux

Ysidoro writes "With No. 316.081 of August 30, 1999 has been filed before the Uruguayan Trademark Office a trademark application for registration of the LINUX name to International class 42 (computer related services). This application has been filed by Mr. Francisco Pereira and Mr. Enrique Place de Cuadro, of Montevideo, Uruguay. In accordance with the official publication from the Industrial Property Bulletin No. 6 of December 1999. See the open letter writed by a group of Uruguayan Linux users. "

Comments

They sure don't smell like bad guys...

[Paul Crowley]

Mostly, the bad guys online give themselves away with everything they do. They try and hide it, but... you can just smell it. The lack of feeling for what a community is. The money-oriented thinking. The Microsoftisms in their HTML. Look at the Linux One pages for an example: the stench of ignorant corporate greed and personal small mindedness is hard to ignore.

Well, LinuxTECH Uruguay may be evil for all I know, but... they sure don't smell bad. They come across like one of us. Their site design is nice and clean and quick. The biggest giveaway is their huge collection of links - the bad guys don't link outside their own site in case you might reach another side of the story. Their news page even includes a link to a Slashdot story - and often refers to GNU/Linux.

I'm just convinced that these people are on our side. I hope this can be resolved to everyone's satisfaction soon.
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Re:Linus' take on this

[mattdm]

You can't copyright a name. And trademark works on a per-country basis. I know that Linus holds the trademark in the US. (Fun to note this one though. Perfectly ok because operating systems aren't laundry detergent or toothpaste.) I believe that Linus also holds the trademark Linux in several other countries, but I'm not sure of details. Anyone?

--

Jihad! Jihad!

[Signal 11]

OH MY GOD, somebody's trying to steal a trademark! LYNCH HIM!!!!! Eat hot rockets scum bag!

So let me get this straight... geeks in general don't like lawyers, the legal system, ad nauseum, preferring to code instead. But while most NORMAL people could care less about another trademark battle, the geeks are out on jihad because somebody in a country I never even heard of is trying to trademark an operating system that the average person still doesn't even know about! I think the more obscure it is, the more geeks like to talk about it... =)

LinuxTECH site translation

[Imperator]

Try http://babelfish.altavista.com/cgi-bin/translate?d oit=done&urltext=http: //www.linux.com.uy/&lp=es_en.

Re:"Exclusive" rights to sell?

[Imperator]

SuSE sells a distribution in a box. Though they don't have the rights to 99% of the software in that box (nor do they claim to), they have spent their money packaging all that software into a distribution. They own that distribution. If they want to make this Uruguayan LinuxTECH company the exclusive distributor of their product, they can. They aren't breaking the GPL: they still distribute source for any GPL'd software in their distro. (Same with other OSS licences.) They don't have an exclusive right to distribution of the non-SuSE software (i.e. I can sell Apache in Uruguay) within the distro, but they do have rights to the boxed distro itself.

Re:what the hell?

[Tom Christiansen]

Cuando llegue aquel día hipotético en que domine Vd un segundo idioma con la décima parte de la capabilidad vista en los autores cuyas obras--y cuya causa--ya discutimos, pues entonces tal vez podrá decir cuatro putas palabras sobre la buena ortografía. Pero ahora, ni se le ocurra. Vaya maleducado que es Vd que no se dé cuenta del respecto debido a estos estimados señores! Le aseguro que habrán traducido esta noticia no por su proprio beneficio, sino por Vd.

O sea, cállese el hocico, idiota ingrato!

Their loss

[MostlyHarmless]

Sure, they can go right ahead and try to trademark the name.

Know what? They may even win. But to what avail? All serious Linux users will avoid them like the plague. This is very similar to the LinuxOne claim, except LinuxOne has a vast market of people who can't tell the difference and haven't hear all the bad pr surrounding them (or so they claim). On the other hand, this company is reselling a standardized distribution aimed at the existing Linux market, so they need all the good press they can get. In the Linux market, most of the purchases are made by technically educated people who probably read /. occasionally if not daily. The Uruguayan company has now lost a huge chunk of their market who will never want anything to do with them because of their animosity towards the Linux community.

void recursion (void)
{
recursion();
}
while(1) printf ("infinite loop");
if (true) printf ("Stupid sig quote");

Something similar happened in Sri Lanka

[RuntimeError]

In Sri Lanka there is a TV station called MTV which stands for Maharaja Telivision. Then another TV station started broadcasting MTV as in Music Television. The Maharaja company obtained an interim injunction order banning MTV ( Music TV).

However, when the case was finally heard, the Music TV people won.

So I guess even if some rogue company tries to trademark Linux in Sri Lanka, the international trademark will prevail.

I'll check on this and write a letter to my friends in LUG to, if possible, obtain a registration on behalf of Linus.

Should we be concerned?

[Calimus]

Not being a very big Law fanatic, especially not an Uruguayan law fanatic what I would like to know is what, if any impact this would have outside of Uruguay? Would this impact the Linux Community in such a way that at some point if these ppl are not stopped that it could hinder sales of or use of the Linux name internationally? I'm not saying lets just leave Uruguay hanging on it's own rope by any means. Personally I feel that there's not much to get all stirred up about. Now if this company started actually trying to oust the ULUG from their domains I'd expect to see full community support and also quite a large stir over the issue.

But are we really looking into this all too far. There is one other patent pending on the Linux name that I know of by a laundry detergent company, yet there wasn't a large outcry about this. I think maybe this hits closer to home since they are trying to patent it on the Computer Industry level rather then on a level that is completely non-related. Suse can let this company have the exclusive right if they want so long as they provide the src for any GPL'd software within their distro as far as I know. I could be wrong.

In the end I think they will either be denied or it just won't really matter. I'm sure this has been done in some other country by now. After all, now there are Win98 Cigarettes, but we didn't raise a stink about that. I know I got a good laugh about it.

It's not going away

[trickfish]

It seems to me that this type of activity will not be going away soon. Better to be proactive now than to end up in litigation with morons like these guys (the ones trying to patent) later.

IMPERATIVE:
If you run a linux .org site, spend the $$ to register your .com and .net domains.

Why? Because we aren't going to move linux further into the mainstream without marketing ourselves successfully to at least some degree, and all the Joe Users out there that can only type .com are going to end up at some other moron's site, not yours.

We have to be sneakier than the other team, and grab domains first, as well as other pre-emptive marketing strikes. As for patents, I have no idea how to be proactive there. Lawyers speak up please!

Re: What can be trademarked

[kevin805]

Windows is a registered trademark, at least in the US, probably in every country with a trademark office (and MS is busy setting up the trademark offices for the rest of the world, I'm sure).

I would guess that the reasoning is that even though "Windows" is a common term, it isn't a common term referring to computer software. You probably couldn't trademark "Operating System" as the name for your OS, or "Windows" as the name of your glass company, or Apple as the name of your fruit distribution company, but Apple as the name of a computer company is fine.

Area of business is a key point in trademark disputes. Apple Corps (Apple Core?) sued Apple Computer for using the name Apple in relation to some sort of music software, because they are a music company. If I start, for example, Penguin Software, Penguin Books wouldn't have a claim against me for trademark infringment. If I planned on starting up a computer press after the company was larger, Penguin would be a bad choice for a name, because then Penguin books would have a claim against me, and I wouldn't be able to use "Penguin" in relation to books. (yes, there is a bookshelf next to this computer.)

If you mean the way Kleenex and Xerox are tryign to avoid being diluted, I don't think this would apply to Linux, unless people started using Linux to refer to, e.g. freebsd. Linux is definitely trademarkable, in my opinion, but it shouldn't be granted to LinuxTech in Uruguay, because it isn't *their* trademark.

--Kevin

What trademark registration REALLY means

[P_Simm]

I JUST attended a class today where we were taught about trademarks, as well as other IP protection, and now I wish I had known about this beforehand so I could have asked about it. :)

But, what I do know is that trademark registration, while useful, isn't as powerful as you might think. In fact, even if these guys get Linux trademarked in Uruguay, I'd go so far as to say they could still get beaten in court if they tried to block sale/distribution of the Linux OS.

A trademark is protected even if it isn't registered, as long as it has the (tm) symbol on it. Registration simply provides a means by which one can publicly declare their claim over a trademark. This way, if someone else tries to use this trademark and pleads ignorance, you can simply say that they should have looked at the public TM database and are therefore in the wrong.

Now, if LinuxTECH had come up with the name Linux on their own, and registered it for trademark in their country, then they'd probably retain trademark rights to 'Linux' if it went to court. But, in this case I'm sure it would be VERY simple to prove that these guys previously saw the Linux name, marked as a (tm), and willfully chose to duplicate and try to register it. If it can be proved that they saw Linux used as a trademark in their country, and yet willfully used the name in violation of those declared IP rights, then they should be found to have no rights over the Linux TM.

This is all assuming that they even try to claim control over the TM and block the sale/dist of Linux at all - if not, then no one has to really care. But if they do, the only hard part would be proving that they saw 'Linux' used as a trademark in their country by someone else already. And if they were reselling distributions of Linux beforehand, it shouldn't be too hard to prove that they've had at least that much contact with Linux previously. :)

Confused complaints

[Rilke]

This may indeed be an evil company, but the open letter just confuses things and makes some pretty dubious points IMHO. Some of this confusion might come from the English translation though.

1. The first point seems pretty unique to Uruguay, and I don't really understand it. How did they get exclusive representation to SusE? Through the gov't, or through SusE??

2. (they copied a "well known" swiss company's name)
I've honestly never heard of the Swiss LinuxTech before. And I don't really see a problem with a Uruguayan company having the same name as a Swiss company.

3. (the name "LinuxTECH" contains "Linux")
I see nothing wrong with the name LinuxTECH. That's just a silly complaint. Lots of company names contain the name Linux or even Windows. For example "Linux Today", "Linux Journal", etc. And notice how complaints about this totally contradict the previous point.

4. (they registered www.linux.com.uy, even though linux.org.uy existed).
The same linux.org vs. linux.com exists in the root domain, and nobody cares. If I were starting a company down there, I'd certainly gobble up that domain.

They Uruguayan users group might have some real complaints, but their open letter doesn't help their argument any. OTOH, LinuxTECH could easily just be a decent company who somehow pissed off a few members of a small users group. There's really no way to tell from this info.

Also, trademarking "Linux" in a small country isn't evil in itself; they might just be protecting themselves against somebody else doing the same thing. It all depends on how they use it.

Link with legal info from REAL lawyers

[P_Simm]

This link was given to me by the patent agent who lectured our class on IP rights, it's at the site for the company he works for and has some great summary IP info. It's a Canadian company, but from my understanding nearly all IP rights have been internationally agreed on. Even in cases where individual countries have their own jurisdiction, the rules are still the same. (Minor difference in North American patent rules vs everyone else, but that's all I know of.)

Anyway, the link:

http://www.adeco.com/general_info.htm

Check out either the Trademarks link or the Acrobat file titled 'Intellectual Property Overview'.

Official SuSE Response

[JamesS]

We at SuSE are concerned about the Linux name issues worldwide. SuSE even works together with Linus Torvalds to mantain the rights of the name Linux. Therefore we will talk to the Uruguayan reseller and find a solution for this issue.

The open letter sounds very agressive and desperate. Please don't forget: A "reseller" buys software packages and re-sells them. And that's it.

Regards,
James S
SuSE Linux Ltd.