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

Firesomething

[kalleguld]

Good thing I installed that plugin, almost makes the browser change name less often.

Firefox tm policy and Debian tm policy v. similar

[Chuck Chunder]

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?

This is going to happen again.

[merdaccia]

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?

May I suggest...

[AnObfuscator]

... a Leonardo Da Quirm replacement name:
Super-fast-and-cross-platform-and-expandable-free- web-browser.

I think that just rolls off the tongue, don't you?

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.

Re:Firefox tm policy and Debian tm policy v. simil

[sik0fewl]

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!

What about the GFDL?

[jesterzog]

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.

Re:What about the GFDL?

[Phexro]

Debian is definitely pedantic about licenses, but I think that's better than having license issues come back to haunt them in the form of a lawsuit.

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.

Re:jeez..here we go again

[Waffle Iron]

So I wonder what new name they'll pick now...

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.

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.

Re:jeez..here we go again

[GraemeDonaldson]

Fireduckbilledplatypus anyone?

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!).

Re:jeez..here we go again

[Elranzer]

Mozilla Explorer? The icon could be a big, firey E

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.