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SSC vs LinuxGazette.net Continued
An anonymous reader writes "To update an earlier story about the pending battle between SSC and LinuxGazette.net, it seems SSC has taken to officially asserting a trademark on the term 'Linux Gazette' and is asking them to relinquish the domain name. Interesting to note that LinuxGazette.net has issue 97 out, while SSC doesn't."
... should desist early and change the site name. And I mean any of both sites, perhaps both!
A name has worth, but friendship when lost is very hard to reacquire. Besides, what's important in that name? Is it "Linux" or "Gazette"?
Don't waste time.
There is a trademark registered to SSC. But the application date was Oct 28,2003. The very same day that Rick Moen notified Phil Hugh that they were moving the magazine accord to the LWN article [lwn.net].
SSC is playing dirty pool not the other around.
Interesting to note that LinuxGazette.net has issue 97 out, while SSC doesn't
But who had the trademark first, or who used the name first, doesn't matter to the WIPO mediator. According to past history, the only thing that matters to WIPO, is who has more money.
Specific examples of our use of this trademark go back to 1996
Ok, but the first issue on LinuxGazette.net is July 1995, so is this claim of precedence bogus or am I missing something big here with respect to the history of this dispute?
linuxgazette.com slashdotted.
linuxgazette.net still standing.
Seems like the trial is over to me...
The only thing corporations understand is money. Cancel your subscription to Linux Journal until SSC abandons this foolhardy path. You can always resubscribe.
The time to act is now, not after SSC has used the courts to screw over the community.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
Confusion about who owns what. This is just playing into the pockets of SCO who is spreading the "ownership is shady with Linux" meme.
Expect to see some major news outlet (Slashdot is not such) publish this news, and exaggerate it over the top.
Can someone please clarify who www.linuxnj.com is/are and how they obtained this letter? I am not very happy with SSC over this situation but I would like to know who is providing this and what axes they have to grind. Verifying its authenticity would be helpful.
You shank my Jengaship!
The Hawaiians get all the vowels, the Russians all the consonants.
Why is everyone bashing SSC ? Okay, fine, it's a corporation going after the little, defenseless contributor who most likely, didn't get paid while giving their labor away. But something you have to note, is that SSC have been running the Linux Gazette since 1996, and it was only this year that the contributors started linuxgazette.net. Check out the domain registration dates :
Domain name: LINUXGAZETTE.NET
Record Created on 12-Jul-2003.
Domain Name: LINUXGAZETTE.COM
Record created on 18-Oct-1997.
Basically, the unpaid contributors didn't like where the company was going with the product, and decide to start their own, only they used the same name. Now, IANAL, but if that is not trying to cause confusion in the market, I don't know what is. SSC is in it's right as it's been exploiting the Linux Gazette name for longer, no matter when they decided to register it as a valid trademark.
Why must the slashbots always criticized corporations. Sometimes the little guy is just being a jerk.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Who filed what when isn't the point. Filing the trademark application is a formality to make it easier in a potential court battle, but trademark protection is primarily linked to use of the name and how much effort you have put into protecting it.
This is an Open Development which will result in a Branded UNIX which will be freely distributed on the Internet in source and binary forms.
A lot has changed since issue 8 with respect to people's intentions....
So PROVIDED that SSC could get a court to agree that that handover was done in a way that gave them property rights to the magazine assets (which given the nature of it as a non-commercial volunteer based magazine where authors retain copyright would be mostly goodwill and any trademark rights) and effectively "owned" the magazine, the court would also likely agree that any claim the Linux Gazette contributors had to the name as an independent entity prior to SSC taking it over would either have been transferred as part of the handover OR have been lost due to disuse (since Linux Gazette has not been operated as a separate entity from SSC during that time and trademark rights are weakened and eventually lost if you don't use or protect your mark).
Note that the big sticking point is whether SSC were transferred any rights to begin with, and possibly whether they gained any rights (alone or as contributors alongside the rest of the people involved) as a result of their activities since they got involved.
If a court decides SSC was effectively the owner after it took over, then asserting '96 as the start time just serves to try to point out that their control over the name and publication was not challenged for many years, and that they were regularly using the mark in that time, which is important to assert the strength of protection they should be afforded.
Mote that I don't like what SSC has done here, and from what I've seen so far I like the Linux Gazette volunteers more than SSC - I'm just pointing out why the use of the name prior to 1996 doesn't necessarily mean a thing.
First off.. let me tackle some of their "response points"
1. A product that is not commercial can still violate trademark. (Cite: www.uspto.gov)
2. LG stated that , in issue #8, they were going to e under the management of the SSC crew. Management implies content rights.
3. They state in their response that they feel a trademark does not exist. It does. It definately does. This can be checked at www.uspto.gov.
Whining like little brats will not solve the problem, and will only create more. LinuxGazette.net's response states that they will not change the name if they are forced to give up the domain, and that implies that they are perfectly willing to confuse the public about which is the real LG.
Trademark holder wins.
publisher@linuxgazette.com works. Phil Hughes may even answer your mail personally.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
This achive of Issue # 8 seems to be unclear as to what happened when they started being hosted by Linux Journal.
That seems to support lg.net's position - Just a hosting arangement.
But..
That seems to show that Fisk is turning it over to SCC. If that is the case then this is SCC's baby now. You can see in the write up where each side is getting their views
Net result, this could have all been handled with a little more tact on both sides. If SCC had just followed the wishes of the people who produced the article, this wouldn't have been a problem.
It should have been the creators of the work, the volunteers, who should have been deciding on what direction the magazine should take. Not some marketroid who found way to suck $$, or techie who felt this was his site, and wanted to put up a CMS and/or excert his power.
I from what I read of #8, I would have to say SCC has the stronger argument, even if they have the
Though two sources of free online linux articles is better then one.
Time travel is possible. We are quickly heading for 1984.
We didn't "leave because we don't like CMSs" (Phil Hughes's claim)
It wasn't "some of the volunteers" (Phil Hughes's claim) but rather 100% of the staff by unanimous decision
We didn't spring the decision to move on SSC by surprise at the last minute (Phil Hughes's claim), but rather had warned them for months about what would happen if they went ahead with their plan.
The editors moved LG to new quarters in part because SSC had said the monthly magazine would cease to exist entirely. (We had no idea SSC would change its mind later and direct uncredited SSC employees to resume producing issues at our old site.) I.e., we actually don't think it's OK to "open up a new site under exactly the same name, even using the same logo", nor were we starting "a spinoff under the same name"; it was a question of move the magazine or let SSC kill the magazine by corporate decree, according to everything they'd told us.
Founder John M. Fisk, in 1996, transferred custody LG to SSC explicitly as a free magazine to be run in harmony with SSC's commercial magazine, Linux Journal. It was explicitly not to be a commercial property.
You cannot "own a name": You can own a commercial brand identity, but Linux Gazette has never been a commercial offering. SSC's assertion to the contrary in its USPTO filing is materially false.
Ownership of everything in LG is retained by each individual contributor, and issued to the public under an open-source licence -- just like with the Linux kernel
Even successful assertion of a trademark that you prove you own lets you enjoin only competing commercial goods or services using your mark in ways likely to confuse your customers into thinking those are your offerings. SSC's attempt to misuse trademark law -- in which they showed no interest for seven years until the very day we told them we were moving the magazine -- against our volunteer magazine seems to assume we're clueless techies and ignorant of trademark law fundamentals.
Discussion of the matter has been occurring at LWN. Here are my two recent posts:
"Chilling Effects" letter received from SSC, Inc.
(Posted Dec 5, 2003 9:05 UTC (Fri) by rickmoen) (Post reply)
Alan Cox wrote:
John Fisk founded Linux Gazette in 1995. He's not visibly part of either side of the argument which begs the question who did he give it to.
It's a fair question, and the top-level answer is that copyright over all content belongs to the individual authors, being published by each of them under an open-source licence (in LG's case, OPL v. 1.0, and two predecessor open-source licences for very early issues). Alan's no doubt very familiar with this concept. {grin}
Alan is of course thinking of some concept of ownership over the magazine as a whole, and that too is a fair question: The answer is that there's really nothing of that sort to own. The compilation copyright (if any) would likewise be OPL-licensed, and LG was from its inception explicitly a community, non-profit effort.
And that leaves an equally fair third question: What was it that John M. Fisk entrusted to SSC, Inc. -- subject to the promise to keep it non-commercial -- when medical school was keeping him too busy to keep things going? Please read again what John wrote: Phil Hughes and SSC, Inc. willingly assumed (and carried out admirably for many years) an obligation, a volunteer job, a custodianship.
And explicitly not over a corporate balance sheet asset, a lesson that Mr. Hughes seems to have f
Why are the people who started Linux Gazette supposed to just abandon a brand they have worked hard to create? It has been their contributions of articles not SSC's dubious contribution of some free hosting. Though the Linux Gazette probably should have paid a token fee just to keep this sort of thing from happening $1 /year ).
The bottom line though is that the Linux Gazette people contributed to the brand. SSC did not. Therefore there exists no reason they should abandon it.
My two cents!
The name of the magazine is not linuxgazette.com. It is Linux Gazette. The fact that their host decided to appropriate the site for a different and unwelcome format does not mean they lose the right to the name of the magazine they created prior to their host being their host. So, they took their magazine, Linux Gazette, elsewhere.
The second biggest mistake in all of this is that somebody somewhere trusted SSC, a for-profit business, enough to let them register linuxgazette.com, rather than place that domain the hands of a core volunteer or the magazine founder. That is the huge, primary source of the issue, as there are so many people (you included it seems) who presume that who owns the domain therefore owns the content. That isn't always true, and it isn't true here.
The first biggest mistake is that people are too trustworthy. Projects such as this should recognize that they exist in the real world, and in the real world formalities are needed. Linux Gazette (and all other projects with a group concept of "ownership") should have been incorporated and then registered as a non-profit organization. The paperwork isn't that hard, the yearly costs are minimal, and it helps avoid these issues because then there is in fact a real tangible owner.
As it is, this is a he-said she-said issue, which it seems will have to be sorted out by a court and lawyers. Though it is obvious to me who is right, and it isn't SSC.
Larry