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Linux Trademark Protection In Australia
robyannetta writes "Australian companies providing Linux products and services may soon have to pay up to $A5000 a year
to licence the operating system name (warning: Registration Required), if the patents agency IP Australia grants a trademark application it is reviewing. About 90 companies with products, services or websites containing the word "Linux" recently received letters of demand from Perth lawyer Jeremy Malcolm. Acting for user group Linux Australia Inc, he asks recipients to sign statements saying their use of the word is subject to the group's licence agreement, which has fees of $A200 to $A5000 under a successful trademark application."
Isn't this the kind of thing Free Software was supposed to be against? Anyone can distribute their own flavor of Linux and call it Linux without being threatened by lawsuits over trademarks?
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Doesn't Linus own the 'Linux' trademark already?
This article, Suspicions fade over Linux trademark move on ZDNet Australia that I dug up claims that, "letters sent out by a lawyer acting on behalf of Linus Torvalds are part of a legitimate process to ensure the open source software's creator maintains control of the 'Linux' trademark."
Can someone please get LINUS to verify this preposterous claim? I would not be surprised if Linux Australia is not a legitimate user group at all.
he is just attempting to scam people, there is a great different between selling a IT product called "linux something" and linuxchix.com. the spirit of linuxmark is to prevent the misuse of the linux name in cases such as linuxchix.com, so that it's legitimate use won't be ruined. money has nothing to do with this. this guy is a con artist.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Until Linus himself comments on this, I'm going to have to assume that this whole thing is a scam, and that their claiming to be acting as "agents of Linus Torvalds" is simply a lie.
It looks like a scam, sounds like a scam, and is spearheaded by a guy who's previous internet comments make him look like a loon.
I seriously doubt that this is in any way legit. Seems like a SCO-like scam, with less finesse and even less of the veneer of respectibility than the SCO scam.
"And if a developer here drops some open source code in our project, then we have to give all the source away...."
Ok I am confused here. You have just contradicted yourself in one sentence. Your project needs a piece of code that exists under an open licence. But you might have to give away the rest of your code because of the nature of the open licence. Now tell me this, if open source did not exist then where would you get the necessary code in a closed source world? The only reason you got to see the code you needed was because it was open otherwise it would exist in binary form only. It seems to me your team either lacks talent or is just plain lazy.
At least in the MS world, you know where you stand...
You don't even know where you stand to begin with. Bottom line is that you wat to steal code but the licence prohibits you from doing so.
Lazy fuck.
Funny thing ... everyone respects RMS, or claims to, yet he's very frequently called upon as a punishment...
I like the line "Do you really represent Linus?", to which your response is "I'm not sure if Linus personally knows of our efforts.."
If Linus dosen't personally know of your efforts, you're scamming people. The trademark is HIS, and until he says "yes", you're a scumbag.
Maybe we can all put Tux icon in place of the word Linux
Ahhhh! This sort of ridiculous statement makes me want to scream! Yes, you can use the Tux icon in fair and reasonable ways because it's protected by copyright and Larry is nice enough to use his rights WRT the copyright to allow people to use it appropriately. But that's *exactly* what the trademark action is also trying to achieve for the term "Linux"! At present it's not a trademark in Australia. This action is to make sure the trademark is controlled by Linus, and do you think he's going to be unreasonable about what people are allowed to do with it? Of course not! On the other hand, what do you think would happen if the trademark was allowed to fall into the hands of a commercial entity with a vested interest? Hmm, scary thought indeed.
Effectively you're saying "I'm not going to use this term because it's going to be under Linus' control through trademark law, so I'll use this image instead because it's under Larry's control under copyright law."
The reason is that unscrupulous operators have been abusing the Linux trademark, and so Linux Australia decided to persue securing it on behalf of Linus. (aka doing the right thing)
The T's and C's (i.e. charging for use of the trademark Linux in Australia) are no different from those identified in the Linus-approved Linux Mark Institute. But note, that Jeremy Malcolm's notice is NOT asking for money, just saying that in the future you may be asked to licence the trademark if you sell a product that is levereging the Linux trademark. This is a key point in trademark law - to secure the trademark in the first place to stop some companies from doing the wrong thing.
See Jon Oxer's blog post on the topic (he's Linux Australia's president).
Well I sat through a Chomsky lecture once, and it was very entertaining. He says the most horrid and challenging things with total equanimity, then back them up with long lists of facts. He is a great public speaker and must be a difficult person to challenge in a public debate. If you search on MIT's website you'll find a few of his lectures available for download.
Similarly if you haven't sat through the standard RMS spiel on Free Software then you've missed something. RMS may not the best public speaker but he speaks simply, clearly and visibly believes what he is talking about.
The common point of these two people is that most people come out of these lectures at least challenged by their viewpoint. It is not at all the sort of thing one regularly hears on prime-time television.
All the best.
If they don't intend to collect the money, why not set the price at $0.01? Then people who were scared into paying wouldn't feel so bad about it.
If the price list says $5000, it looks as though they actually expect to collect thousands of dollars, even if they give everyone a discount. And if there are lawers involved, they would have to collect a good bit of money to pay their fees. Even geeky lawyers expect to be paid. Or is Jeremy doing this for free too?