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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."
Good thing I installed that plugin, almost makes the browser change name less often.
Sigs are bad for your health
As far as I can see the Firefox trademark policy isn't fundamentally different from Debian's own trademark policy.
If you are distributing what Debian distribute you can call it Debian. If you want to do something different, call it something else.
Isn't that essentially what the Firefox trademark policy says?
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Why do I have the sinking feeling that we're all going to be sitting here in ten years time, reading about the Godzilla Foundation dispute over ScorchedBadger and LightningParakeet?
*blinking cursor*
So I'm interested in reading the actual discussions on the debian mailinglists - because I have this strange quirk where I actually find them interesting.
/. ? They're worse than useless.
So, google site:lists.debian.org firefox trademark - nothing since february, all of which has long since been resolved. So much for "recently criticised".
Could we please just stop linking to zdnet/cnet/... articles here on
... a Leonardo Da Quirm replacement name:- web-browser.
Super-fast-and-cross-platform-and-expandable-free
I think that just rolls off the tongue, don't you?
multifariam.net -- yet another nerd blog
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.
In other news...
The Debian development community is currently hotly debating whether the Debian Project's strict trademarks policy violates Debian's social contract.
Oh, boy! I can't wait to see how this one turns out!
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
I liked this when I was 12-- HBO used to show it all the time:
"A pilot is sent into the Soviet Union on a mission to steal a prototype jet fighter that can be partially controlled by a neuralink."
1984-- a very good year-- Macintosh first appeared, Firefox on HBO, and Airwolf on CBS. Best... tv show theme... ever.
Go to Help -> About Firefox...
"Some trademark rights used under licence from The Charlton Company."
A few weeks ago, I installed the autoconf package on my Debian system, only to discover that there was no documentation included in the standard /usr/share/doc/autoconf/ location. After checking, I discovered that it'd be recently removed, because Debian considers the GNU Free Documentation Licence -- the main documentation licence promoted by the FSF -- as a non-free licence. (Debian has concerns about how it'd work in DRM environments. The Free Software Foundation doesn't agree.)
Luckily in that case, there's now an autoconf-doc package in the non-free section of Debian, and I installed that. What confuses me, though, is how Debian expects to cope in the future if it doesn't accept something as the GFDL, which is widely accepted as the Free Software Foundation's GPL-for-documentation, and used in a lot of places related to open source. All of the KDE help files, for instance, are distributed under the GFDL. Debian hasn't cut them yet, but does this mean that it won't be including them as soon as someone realises?
I really like Debian and I have no plans to stop using it unless it stops being possible to do what I want. I'm impressed by the project's dedication to being so specific about licences, but sometimes I wonder how much of that will eventually come back to haunt it.
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.
My suggestions:
"{1e8ba19e-48eb-4a68-bec4-d81c010069e4} (tm) Web Browser" and
"{33899fb5-719b-4e75-a0ef-e7f91b196030} (tm) Mail Client"
The odds that these name have been previously trademarked are rather slim.
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.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Fireduckbilledplatypus anyone?
I think, therefore I am. I think?
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.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
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.
Mozilla Explorer? The icon could be a big, firey E
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.
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.
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.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"