Slashdot Mirror
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."
link
My favoite quote from TF Lawyer "At this point, the exercise is not about extracting fees from people."
No, not at up to A$5000, it couldnt possibly be about the money.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I tried that Google search you suggested and it looks like he tried to sue Google because Google Search linked to pages where people got pissed off after he tried to sue them.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
What's your problem? I followed the post's advice, and Googled (Jeremy Malcom Scientology) (applying the correct Google syntax for searching for the words, rather than as an exact phrase). I found all kinds of pages documenting Malcom's role both as an abusive lawyer for Scientology in Australia, and as a general abuser of speech/suppression techniques - consistent with the suppressive actions of Scientology worldwide. Maybe you just have poor Google skills, or took the instructions too literally, searching for the phrase delimited by quotes, rather than by parentheses.
Or maybe by "this" (in your "this has to be teh best troll I've ever seen") you meant your own post. Shooting for "best troll". Well, it's not bad, but not so great. All it took to debunk it was to do what the poster to whom you replied instructed (translated to actually work).
In either case, no one has (as of this writing) modded you up. But you should opt out of moderating - you're dangerous.
--
make install -not war
Take a chill pill. He is legit. He's a lawyer. He's representing Linux Australia who are operating under instructions from the Linux Mark Institute who represent Linus. It's all perfectly above board. Lawyers will represent anyone who can pay. To form an opinion of a lawyer based on one case they did is naive to the extreme. If you want to see what Jeremy Malcolm is all about, go read what he has written or look at the other cases he has been involved in. He introduced the first anti-SPAM act in Australia. He actively opposed the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement. He's an advocate for privacy and common carrier protections.
On the other hand, your actions are bordering on libel and have already violated anti-vilification laws in this country.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Funny,
I could tell that it was from the same "organization" without even performing the whois.
Get used to reading weasel, and phrases like "We only exercise the trademark rights that Linux has authorized us to represent" read a lot like "We don't have any right to represent Linux because otherwise we would state up front exactly what Linux has authorized us to do."
Lawyers never beat around the bush when they are on the winning side.
Yeah, QuantumG posted this same attempt at a refutation of the story elsewhere on this discussion. I still don't get it. You are attempting to refute a claim against a lawyer by referring us to the lawyer's FAQ. That's not an unbiased source.
And, really, what gives you the ability to speak for Linus Torvalds? You may indeed have that warrant, but you have given me no reason to believe so.
And I've seen no clear indication that these lawyers are representing the interests of Linus Torvalds. Can you give me authoritative information that will reassure me?
This is a really weird slashdot post and discussion. I'm very suspicious.
It's over now. That, or it's go time. One of the two. acts of gord
linux.org.au has been a registered domain name for some years. Back before broadband, I found the supplier for my first Linux CD, Red Hat 5.1 when it was fresh, through it. (I think the CDs cost about $10, which took me a while to save up for. I was in year 7 or 8 at the time :)
The webpage looks drastically different, though, and it's possible that over the years the membership has changed so that it's no longer there for Linux users, but there to extort the name. I don't really know what my opinion should be.
Look out!
I'd like to see documentation of that case. Because, as is well known, truth is defense against libel/slander charges. Of course, a better lawyer can be proof against justice, but I'll take my chances with this Slashnutter. I've got plenty of basis to impugn this false, wrong twit - especially when they start threatening that someone else, even worse than they, is going to sue me.
--
make install -not war
Jon "maddog" Hall is the president of Linux International, not of OSDL. The CEO of OSDL is Stuart Cohen.
Given that you cannot get the basic facts right on your FAP, I seriously doubt that you represent who you claim to represent and I seriously doubt that Linux, Cohen or Jon "maddog" Hall approve, condone or endorse your efforts.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
According to the US State Department, (among others), the definition of trademark "dilution" is:
A type of infringement of a trademark in which the defendant's use, while not causing likelihood of confusion, tarnishes the image or blurs the distinctiveness of the owner's mark. To possess the selling power and recognition protected by antidilution statutes, a mark must be relatively strong and famous, at least within a certain group of people, product line, or territory.
Further clarification is available:
The legal doctrine of dilution, recognized in the statutes or case law of 31 states, applies to marks which are highly similar or identical to strong, well-known trademarks. The doctrine stipulates that the use of a famous trademark by any party other than its owner will result in loss of the mark's distinctiveness - even when the goods or services are not related and there is no likelihood of confusion. Some names may be judged to be available because they are already diluted; not, that is, the name is in use by a number of different companies which may or may not include a famous user.
This means that someone can't use a famous mark to sell their unrelated product, even in a different market (geographical, product type, etc). It applies not only to owners of a mark, who must reregister in another "class" to use it in that class, but also to others who won't be confusing the consumer as to which company is selling the product, but rather what kind of product the mark refers to at all. It is not clear, however, that dilution is restricted to mean only competition with the mark in noncompeting markets, only that the doctrine recognizes such dilution as infringement.
--
make install -not war
I received the letter in /email/ as well - what bothers me is that none of my products or service have linux used in their names, /none/. I know that the various projects I have OpenSourced will run in linux but that's the extent of it.
The letter was sent out in the evening and quite honestly is immediately ranked as spam/scam in my eyes such to the point where I started hunting around for a way to contact Linus or a group representing Linus to inform him of this.
In the end I wrote back a simple email saying that we didn't use Linux in our product names (why limit ourselves to linux when there's so many other OS's too).
If the guy wanted to be taken seriously it should have been a mailout using the registered postal service.
Looks like this was really a bit of a fishing expedition to me.
Well given the name Linux was invented by a third party, and the prior use I hope the mark gets thrown out. And if he's your lawyer you should be ashamed.
We had a similar scan in the EU (Austria primarily) of someone making the same kind of "for the good of Linux' type claims. That one was dealt with in the same way I hope this is.. crushed underfoot.