Australian Linux Trademark Holds Water

Seft writes "The Inquirer is running a story in response to the recent Linux trademark news in Australia which was previously covered on Slashdot. The story was dismissed as a hoax by many, but now it seems that Linus Torvalds is dead serious." John 'Maddog' Hall stated for the article that the move was not about getting a slice of anyone's action but purely to protect the quality of products that utilize the Linux name.

Comments

Any apologies from the slashdot crowd?

[Richard_at_work]

After all, some of the things said about the lawyer involved in this case were less than civilised or polite, and indeed a lot of posters had him mixed up with someone else of a similiar name. So, anyone willing to retract what they said?

Re:Uh huh.

[awkScooby]

It's about loosing your trademark if you don't defend it. Linus holds the trademark "Linux", so it's up to him to take actions to protect that trademark. If that means "control," then yes, it's about control.

It helps to show that you've made a good faith effort in defending your trademark if you have documentation showing how you've licensed the trademark, and if you've gone after people who have not licensed that trademark.

If Linus does nothing, Microsoft could call the next version of Windows Linux (not that I believe that would happen), and nobody could do a thing about it. Knowing the Patent Office, Microsoft would then be granted the Linux trademark, and would charge $10 per copy... Chaos would ensue, etc.

Free as in speech

[tezza]

This needs to be ammended to

Free as in Speech, as long as you don't use our Trademark.

But a lot of open source licenses have exactly this restriction, like the Apache License

6. Trademarks. This License does not grant permission to use the trade names, trademarks, service marks, or product names of the Licensor, except as required for reasonable and customary use in describing the origin of the Work and reproducing the content of the NOTICE file.

And lots of others too, mainly extending from the time when Open Source was driven from universities Berkely, MIT who didn't want their 'Trademark' abused.

Re:Lesson 2: Sense of Humour Needed

[Klivian]

why not just ask for $1

Because setting up, administrating and defending a trademark are not free. You have to cover the actual cost. Or are you suggesting that Linus should pay out of his own pocket the expenses involved for dealing with commercial entities using his trademark.

The matter of cash......

[OmniGeek]

BTW, PJ on GrokLaw has an interesting piece on this issue.

As I understand the matter, Linus gets the massive sum of $0 from Linux. From this enormous war chest, he has to spend money on lawyers and C&D letters defending the use of the registered trade name; if he doesn't defend it, the trademark is lost, and anyone can use the name for any purpose they like, good or bad (as, for example, a hypothetical Microsoft Linux that had nothing to do with real Linux and just served to fragment the community).

Clearly, there is good reason for SOMEONE to protect the use of the Linux name, and this takes money. The numbers I've seen for the fees being charged to license the name for trade use do not appear unreasonable (and if you're using a Linux product someone else produced, you don't pay anything, plus there are the aforementioned fair-use exceptions), the folks the money goes to are an independent foundation that only manages the trade mark (nobody is being enriched by it), and there doesn't seem to be any other viable alternative if the trademark is to be protected from misuse.

With this in mind, I don't find Linus' actions the least bit disturbing or unreasonable.