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Universities Dispute with Red Hat over 'Fedora'
Carl Lagoze points out that a pre-existing software project is already using the Fedora name, dating back to 1998. They're unhappy with Red Hat's claim to the name, and have objected.
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A Trademark needs to be exact, It's a Fedora (Generic) and it's not red, and it's not pointing the right direction.
Just ask Rob about the IBM Logo, IBM said that since it wasn't the proper ratio it wasn't a valid Logo. In an old job we got to co-brand with IBM, and the dimensions were defined down to the width of the spaces and blue in the lettering.
This sig is the express property of someone.
You can trademark common english words if the product/service the trademark will be put on is not related to the meaning of the word.
I can trademark "Truck" for some software product but not for a vehicule.
Click here to view the status of Red Hat's Trademark filing.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
Actually you can, if it's a made-up word. Now that Phillip-Morris is "Altria" or whatever, I can't go and start "Altria Lumber Concern" even though lumber isn't related to their cancer creation service.
But, since neither party made up the word "Fedora", you may have a point. However, the "field" is generally recognized to be rather broad, for example, "software". If some company decided to call its telephony software suite "Nero Burning ROM", Ahead could still stop them even though telephony and CD recording are ostensibly different fields.
All's true that is mistrusted
A search at the US patent and trademark office lists 4 registered trademarks with the word fedora in them.
. 73467748 Feb 28 1984 Fedora Cafe and Bar
. 78296509 Sept 5 2003 Red Hat
. 78268874 June 30 2003 cosmetics
. 78312293 Oct 10 2003 Chemical Data Software
The fedora.info site of the complaining fedora project is using a tm symbol next to thier name on the site, but they have not registered it with the US trademark office.
It is not exclusively trademarked for software by fedora.info.
This could be forgiven of a small independent group, but this group is a co sponsored project, part of Cornell University and University of Virginia both of which I am sure have strict policies about things like Trademark, copyright and patents. And both have the legal staff to handle it.
Sorry but they won't get any sympathy from me, and no support from the law.
Trademark is not like copyright law, you must register to get exclusive control for a product in a market.
That's probably why Cornell's Fedora Project uses a hat as a logo and why Redhat chose Fedora as a project name.
From the bottom of the (file manager) project's home page:
Gentoo the Linux distribution has nothing to do with gentoo the file manager, except the latter runs on the former. I actually used the name first of the two, way back in September 1998. I've been in touch with the Gentoo folks, and we're cool.