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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."
...may soon have to pay up to $A5000 a year to licence the operating system name (warning: Registration Required) [Emphasis added]
So you have to register to read about how people may have to register...
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?
He's a crackpot scientologist.
First hit: http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/lawer-from-hell.htm is really interesting.
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. Those using the term in a descriptive sense do not have to pay, he says.
"It is your legal responsibility to obtain a licence from the Linux Mark Institute before you are allowed to use the word 'Linux' as part of your product or service name or brand," Mr Malcolm wrote to companies.
User group president Jonathan Oxer says the trademark application is to protect the name from abuse. "At this point, the exercise is not about extracting fees from people," he says. "It's an extremely small number of people that are likely to have to licence it. It's about establishing the trademark. This is the reality of working in the commercial world that we're in now."
Reactions ranged from support to confusion.
"I suspected it was a scam, so I posted the message (to a local mailing list) to find out more," says Richard Ham, a Sunshine Coast IT consultant whose ventures include his EdIT Counsel consultancy and Linux-related website http://linuxhowtos.net/">linuxhowtos.net.
Investigations relieved Mr Ham's concerns, but not everyone is so understanding.
"There's been a mixture of positive support and paranoia, and that's kind of what I expected," says Mr Malcolm, who was engaged in a celebrated 2002 anti-spamming case against Perth company T3.
The trademark action emerged after a 2003 conflict in which an Adelaide Linux consultancy called itself Linux Australia Pty Ltd. The user group, in operation for years, took exception to the name's similarity and blocked the application through IP Australia. The consultancy changed its name to OpenEra but the incident highlighted that the Linux name was in legal limbo because it was unregistered.
The user group acted to become an agent for the Linux Mark Institute, a US-based organisation created in 2002 to police use of Linux creator Linus Torvalds' trademark after he became concerned about a website operator selling pornography through http://linuxchix.com/">linuxchix.com.
The Australian trademark application was lodged with the trademarks office on January 19 last year. It has an acceptance due date of September 7.
In the weeks leading to that date, Mr Malcolm hopes to build momentum for the initiative so the trademark will be granted to Mr Torvalds, with the user group monitoring use in Australia.
About a dozen letters have been returned and Mr Malcolm is in talks with IP Australia over whether that is enough.
"I'm hopeful that just to show that we've got positive responses from some of the most important users of Linux out there will be enough to convince IP Australia to grant the trademark," he says.
OpenEra, whose inadvertent naming conflict with the user group started the process, got its letter last week and "we'll be signing it", says managing director Hosi Stankovic.
"We have the legacy of (the dispute) and all the hate mails but we don't really have any objections to (the user group) registering the name," he says.
"We just want a trademark and to have it safe to trade with."
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.
If you remove the 'oneclick' argument from the URL.
r otection-comes-at-a-cost-for-some/2005/08/15/11239 57995044.html
http://www.smh.com.au/news/next/linux-trademark-p
He's not charging all that much for use of the trademark. I don't usually see monetary figures in hex, though. I guess that's just a Linus thing. But $41,472 - $42,240 seems pretty reasonable.
Your FAQ is from the organization this quack lawyer represents, in his attempt to extort A$thousands from people using the Linux trademark appropriately. Who cares what their answers are? Why are you defending this creep, and his obvious ploy to cash in on the brand equity created by Torvalds and everyone else actually contributing to "Linux"?
--
make install -not war
Guys, the Slashdot summary is a little misleading. The group "Linux Australia Inc" is NOT applying for the trademark.
:(
I work at the patent office here in Australia and so I looked it up. The details of the trademark are:
Trade Mark : 985197
Type of Mark: Word
Acceptance Due: 07-SEP-2005
Class/es: 9, 16, 42
Owner/s: Linus Torvalds
GPO Box 4788
SYDNEY,2071,NSW
AUSTRALIA
This actually seems to be a genuine attempt at preventing malicious abuse of the Linux name.
So I'm a bit ambivalent about this trademark. On one hand it goes against the spirit of open-ness. On the other hand I can think of numerous examples where I would want this enforced (eg, it protects the name from abuse by certain world-dominating-software-companies who may have an interest in dirtying the name).
I'm no fan of patents in IT, but this seems like a necessary evil to me.
Sad reflection of the times we live in...
THANK YOU... I was hoping someone was going to post that soon.
An FAQ for the /. hordes...
We're not... the letter (and the email body which contained the first paragraph) specifically state "This is not a letter of demand, but rather a request for your assistance..."
Don't look at us, that's the pricing set by the Linux Mark Institute (LMI) and they say that most uses are no more than $500. What's more, the license only covers direct uses of the name (like in a business name) not descriptive uses like "We sell Linux CDs". In any event, that's all down the road, and we're not likely to be the ones pursuing it anyway (that's LMI's job). Don't get your panties in a knot.
No, it doesn't. That's what we're trying to do, get it registered for Linus here.
Yes, really. Feel free to check with Linux Australia Inc, LMI, whoever. I'm not sure if Linus personally knows of our efforts, but Jon "maddog" Hall (President of OSDL I believe) certainly does.
Andrew Cowie (one of the Linux Australia board members) has written an excellent summary in his blog. Well worth the read.
And in case you think I'm talking out of my rear, I work for Jeremy (on the IT side, IANAL) and was the one who "physically" sent out the 90 emails.
Can't find examples of evolution? No matter, neither could Dawkins
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
Ok. Jeremy is my Lawyer, and folks actually need to understand he's a bloody good guy who helped out a community journalism group I'm involved with free of charge once because , well we where poor asses and he's got a heart.
Jeremy is doing this as LINUS's rep here so as to assert that the trademark application is REAL, so as to stop unsrupulous companies abusing the name "Linux" or trying to trademark it.
I dont know if they intend to collect on the money, my suspicion is that its pretty damn negotiable. Its just to assert that linus's trademark is a real one.
I don't know what the deal is with Jeremys Scientology suite was. I know he stepped down from the EFA over it, which was the ethical thing to do. Either way, I doubt Jeremy can answer that concern for you because of the lawyer/client confidentiality thing. I guess everyone has a black -spot in the history.
[b]THERES ALWAYS MORE TO THE STORY THAN MEETS THE EYE[/b]
Jeremy is a geek. A raging geek. He's proud of it too. He gives a damn about linux, and you can be assured this is not some SCO type grab.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.