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Mozilla Cracks Down On Merchandise Sellers

Posted by timothy on from the likelihood-of-confusion dept.

An anonymous reader writes "MozillaZine reports that the Mozilla Foundation is cracking down on those selling unofficial Mozilla-branded merchandise. This takes the form of an open letter addressed to retailers of goods that bear the Mozilla name or logos. The letter suggests that the Foundation are willing to work with those selling Mozilla wares, as long as they get a cut and the retailer isn't operating in the US, Canada or Mexico, where they would be competing with the Foundation's own Mozilla Store. Threats of legal action for non-compliance are issued, albeit with friendly overtones. This open letter is part of the Mozilla Foundation's campaign to better enforce its trademarks, an effort that began when the Foundation was launched in July. In a related move, the Foundation announced that the new Firefox artwork is not open-source and can only be used in official builds or those sanctioned by the Foundation - this has led to debates about whether Firefox is free enough to be included in the Debian Linux distribution."

3 of 565 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Um... by ADRA · · Score: 5, Informative

    The word is trademark, not copyright:
    http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/lice nsing.html

    Redhat does the same thing with their distribution, but its spread out thoughout the entire distro.

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    Bye!
  2. Alternative (free) artwork is being provided by sgarrity · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is a simple option for those that don't get official permission from the Mozilla Foundation to use the trademarked artwork.

    A simple "--enable-official-branding" flag can be used when building to include the official artwork. Otherwise, generic versions of the artwork are included (which are free/open). This is being worked on as we speak and should be in the nightly builds this week.

    Steven Garrity
    Mozilla Visual Identity Team

  3. Re:Um... by mlk · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, the Moz in IE (and many others) is to try to get round the evil stupid twats that think restricting web content using browser sniffing is a "good thing".

    Netscape has always(1) used the term "Mozilla" internally for its browser. Back in the Netscape 3/4 vs MSIE 3/4 days, Netscape was winning the browser war, and the aformentioned evil stupid twats that think restricting web content using browser sniffing is a "good thing" was restricting access to Netscape only. MSIE put the Mozilla (Compatabile; ...) (in direct violation of an RFC, but hey) to get round the evil twats that should be kicked lots, then sold into slavery on eBay.

    (1) May or may not be "always" :)

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    Wow, I should not post when knackered.