Slashdot Mirror
Preliminary Injunction Against SuSE
Random Walk writes "The German news site Heise Online reports that on behalf of an anonymous client,
a lawyer has won a
preliminary injunction (German only)
against the Linux distributor SuSE.
The injunction forbids the delivery of SuSE CDs as long as they contain some program name that apparently violates a registered
trademark. No more details available, but SuSE seems to be in negotiations with the other party." Head over to the fish for translation.
After Samba and kIllustrator, yet another open source program is in trouble. A regional court in Munich granted attorney general v. Gravenreuth a preliminary injunction against German Linux distributor SuSE. Apparently, the reason has to do with one of the open source programs contained in the SuSE distribution. The injunction forbids SuSE to continue distributing their product until the name of this program is changed. This could lead to SuSE suffering a substantial financial loss, as they can no longer sell CD's they've already manufactured.
Attorney general v. Gravenreuth confirmed he was requested to file suit on behalf of a third party, but declined to give further details, at the request of said third party. Christian Eagle, head of public relations at SuSE, stated his company will provide more information at a later date.
ok, so it's not shakespeare, but it's readable at least.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
Much of Gravenreuth's tactics in these days happened in the German magazine "64'er". I think this has also been covered in this magazine itself once. The scheme was more or less the same every time: Some people (kids, in most cases) annonced something in the private ads part of the magazine. A computer game, for example, but not a copy. They were then contacted by some girl by snail-mail, often including a photo (the same photo, but different names for the girl..) who was interested in the ad. She then asked, if one would like to "trade" some other games. If the victim sent back a list of (copied..) games back, he was sued a short time after.
So this "girl" *asked* to trade her copied software and then sued the people who responded in the name of the software company.
Gravenreuth later started to work for companies like Symicron. Symicron claimed to have an older Trademark "Explorer", and Gravenreuth successfully negotiated some sum of money with Microsoft (they did this instead of going to court; hell knows why). The point is that Symicron hasn't proven yet that an actual Symicron product called "Explorer" ever existed. But they, with Gravenreuth as lawyer, continue to sue nearly everybody who uses the name "Explorer" in Germany for computer thingies. Like a tool named "FTP-Explorer" and so on.
They even went to court against Heise (which host the newsticker that this Slashdot story is based on), because they just put one of these tools *named* with something like "Explorer" on their CD for the printed magazine "c't". They threatened to go to _every_ shop that had this issue of the magazine legally to frighten them so sell it.
There are lots of stories about Gravenreuth. Most of the very details are not known because it's always legal affairs and you can easily be sued yourself by Gravenreuth if he claims you wrote something that is not correct or not publically proven.
So, of course this whole posting is just IMHO, AFAIK and AFAIR, and IANAL, and nothing of all this is true anyway.... (I'm living in Germany.)
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
Yeah I know, my German is not perfect (I'm Dutch), but those babelfish translations hurt.
Gravenreuth vs. Linux distributor SuSE
After Samba and KIllustrator yet another Open Source program is keeping lawyers busy. Lawyer Guenther Freiherr(1) von Gravenreuth has obtained a preliminary injunction against German Linux distributor SuSE from the Muenchen State Court. The reason seems to be an Open Source program referenced on a SuSE-CD. It appears(2) that Gravenreuth has had the court forbid further shipments of the Neuremberg company's Linux distribution, as long as the contested program's name is used in that. This could lead to substantial losses for SuSE if it can no longer ship the already produced copies.
When asked, Freiherr von Gravenreuth confirmed to have obtained a preliminary injunction against the name(3) of an Open Source program. He declined to name further details because his client would want "to settle with the opposition" and did not want to be named. Christian Egle, press spokesman for SuSE GmbH, declared that his company would make its position known in the coming days.
Notes:
- Freiherr: a title of minor nobility. Comparable to the English 'Sir'.
- The original had "Offenbar" which can be translated in a variety of ways. I think that "It appears" is best here.
- "Kennzeichnung" litteraly means "designation", or "distinguishing aspect". In context, "name" makes sense, but it is not the best translation.
I did have to play a little with the sentence construction, but I think this will make sense.On a side note: Why does this bloody Windows (I'm at work) insist on raising the focused window? At home (Debian GNU/Linux) I could have left the original article on top and typed in the textbox simultaneously. Now I had to switch constantly. Grrr.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
for those of you who speak german: there is even a gravenreuth-FAQ: http://www.klostermaier.de/fvg/faq.html
sig intentionally left blank
From what I've heard from a source close to the action he sues SuSE (no pun intended) in the name of crayon, a company which just distributes some lame graphic sets.
*sigh*
Basically: it's about Krayon, which used to be part of the KOffice suite. The program is not actually on the SuSE CD, but there is a leftover entry in the KDE menu, labeled Krayon.
Krayon is supposed to conflict with the "Crayon" trademark, which is held by Seidel Softwareservice .
Gravenreuth the "lawyer" who wrote this Abmahnung stated that he's prepared to settle with SuSE.
It's presumed that SuSE will want to settle, too.