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Linux Trademark Fun Continues

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-to-read dept.

Orre noted an article running on internetnews about LMI's efforts to license the Linux trademark to companies that use it. Prices range from $200 to $5k for companies with over a million bucks in revenue.

5 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. Why charge for it? by benna · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why not just create a blanket license which says for what purposes the Linux trademark is allowed to be used, and be done with it. No need to charge companies for it, if, as Linus says, it isn't about the money. It seems to me this would satisfy the requirement that Linus police his trademark.

    --
    "It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
    1. Re:Why charge for it? by maxwell+demon · · Score: 3, Interesting
      It is simple - if you are non-profit and want to call your product 'My Linux Babe', you can do it - just you won't get ANY protection when someone also takes this title. BUT if you are sublicenser of trademark "Linux", then your title is also protected.

      It's not quite as simple. From Linus' mail:

      Or, if the name ends up showing up in a trademark search that LMI needs to do every once in a while just to protect the trademark (another legal requirement for trademarks), LMI itself might have to send you a cease-and-desist-or-sublicense it letter.

      Which means, that you are practically guaranteed to get a C&D letter from LMI sooner or later, even if you chose a name which isn't likely to be used by anyone else. Which in turn means that you are effectively forced to license the name.

      BTW, I don't see how this legal requirement to enforce the trademark should suddenly disappear if it's in combination with another trademark. "Microsoft Linux" would still infringe on the trademark rights even though "Microsoft" is a trademarked name in itself. Therefore "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" should be an infringment either, despite "Red Hat" being a trademark in itself, and therefore the legal requirement of enforcement should hold there either.

      IANAL, however.
      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  2. Red Hat doesn't have a license by darthcamaro · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That's the real interesting part of this - Red Hat doesn't have a license, neither does Mandriva. Novell does. So if it's good enough for Red Hat not to have a license than it's good enough for me.

  3. Linus disses /. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting


    " the whole _point_ of slashdot is to have this big public wanking session with people getting together and making their own "insightful" comment on any random topic, whether they know anything about it or not."

    - Linus Torvalds, 20 Aug 2005

    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95

  4. I call BS! by ImaLamer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Red Hat doesn't have one because they aren't using 'Linux' in their name. It's Red Hat, Inc.

    Makes me wonder though why Novell pays, being that they are "Novell Inc.".

    What about the product: "Red Hat Enterprise Linux"?

    Interestingly, I notice that the Red Hat web site doesn't use "Linux" on the front page except in direct reference to RHEL.

    --
    Get your Unix fortune now!