Firefox Faces Trademark Issues

daria42 writes "The Debian development community is currently hotly debating whether the Mozilla Foundation's strict trademarks policy violates Debian's social contract. However, in a twist, it appears Mozilla has not received approval for the Firefox trademarks yet, and the Firefox name may already be taken in the UK and Germany. The foundation has not applied for the Thunderbird trademark anywhere yet."

Comments

Re:I really dislike these source-less zdnet articl

[savala]

Although I completely agree with the parent that ZDNet articles are worse than useless, there has been recent discussion on the debian mailinglist. Don't know why it's not in google yet (too recent), but the thread on debian-devel starts here.

Approved in the US, will register shortly

[Animats]

The US registration status for Firefox is "The final review before registration has been completed for this Intent to Use application and it will register in due course."

The Firefox trademark was allowed for registration on 2005-04-15. It's currently in the "publication and issue section", where they print up the nice certificate with the seal and ribbon and send it to the Mozilla Foundation, print the notice in the Official Gazette of the United States Patent and Trademark Office and send it to all Depositary Libraries, "enter the trademark upon the Principal Register", and do all that 19th century stuff.

But it's been a done deal since April.

Debian Free Software Guidelines

[Chuck Chunder]

State, in part:

4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code

The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form _only_ if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software. (This is a compromise. The Debian group encourages all authors not to restrict any files, source or binary, from being modified.)

Emphasis mine. It seems to me that the "issue" here has already been pretty much covered. The intent seems clear. Although it's not considered ideal Debian seems to have accepted that authors may want derived works to carry different identifiers of one sort or another.

Maybe it's just a pity it doesn't say:

The license may require derived works to carry different name, version numbers and/or trademarks from the original software.

Trademark in the UK

[squoozer]

Has anyone actually bottered to check the PTO in the UK before going off on one about how Firefox is already registered?

If you go over there and have a little look you will notice that the mozilla foundation has filed their trademark application and none of the other firefox applications directly conflict with it. There are others in class 9 but none of them specifically list web browser (which the firefox applicaiton does) as part of the application. The biggest threat, IMHO, is 2007607 which bangs on about software but from an analysis point of view. IANAL but I would say that firefox will probably be granted the trademark in the UK at least.

Re:Sigh...

[RedWizzard]

But they forgot to trademark firefox? Whoooopppps!

They didn't forget to trademark Firefox. They just haven't had it issued yet, though it soon will be. They also may not be able to get the trademark in every country (what a suprise!).

tm in Germany

[dtietze]

Apparently it's been registered in Germany since 1995! "Firefox" as a trademark for use in computer software, computer consulting, etc. (trademark group 42 in the German trademark system) has been registered in 1995 to "Firefox Communications Limited, Solihull, GB". Presumably these are the same folks holding the trademark in GB.
A short research in the publically searchable database of the German national patent and trademark registry (http://dpinfo.dpma.de/ would have shown that.
Since they trademarks have been registered in 1995, I find it highly unlikely (but not infinitely improbable) that they were registered in order to "cash in" on the Firefox browser popularity.
Mind you, "Firefox" has also been registered by Volkswagen in 2005. So watch out for the new VW Beetle Firefox (with tabbed driver's seat) at a car dealership near you :-))
Dan.

The Real Situation

[Gerv]

I'm the person at the MoFo responsible for the trademark discussion with Debian. Please read my blog post on the subject to get the correct story.

Re:Why?

[starwed]

What you shouldn't be surprised about anymore is alarmist stories in the media.

In fact, they were pretty thorough. When mozilla.org announced the name change, the trademark holder in the UK was mentioned; also mentioned was the deal negotiated with that trademark holder. Oddly enough, the article doesn't contain that last bit of information. Not inflammatory enough, I guess. ^_^

Gervase Markham has a response up on his blog that should probably be read if you find this story interesting.

Re:jeez..here we go again

[zero_offset]

RTFA. Nobody is contesting their right to the name, but the entire first page of comments (and thanks to the miracle of slashcode, the same comments on the next few pages) is a bunch of speculation and whining about their new name, or who is suing whom, etc.

In fact, the article title is crap. They don't face "trademark issues", Debian just doesn't like the Moz trademark policy.