Linux Trademark Rejected in Australia

daria42 writes "Linus Torvalds' bid to have the word 'Linux' trademarked in Australia has failed, with the local intellectual property regulator sending his lawyer a vitriolic letter deriding efforts to provide evidence the trademark application was legitimate. In the letter, the regulator points out that information from Wikipedia and Google used by the lawyer to support the trademark application is simply not effective in making the case for a trademark to be registered."

Comments

The good, the bad and the ugly

[adtifyj]

This is good news. Nobody can use trademark law to their advantage here in Australia. Nobody needs to be concerned about trademarks. Everyone can go back to using the word as they wish.

The bad news is that bad people can use Linux however they like. This will mean that the Aussie LUGs will need to keep an eye out for slander and libel, and act.

The end goal was to prevent trademark disputes, yet people in favour of the trademark want to spend money keeping the trademark application process going. Why?

Re:The good, the bad and the ugly

[B747SP]

It is precisely this wide definition that would provide the legal justification for the ACCC shutting down an OS that was clearly not being described properly.

That's all well and good, but you know as well as I do that the ACCC couldn't shut down a loud party in a park.

The 'ACCC', for those not ofay with the name, is the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Officially, they're the "Australian government organisation responsible for ensuring compliance with the Trade Practices Act". Practically, they're an utterly toothless tiger that, well, pretty much just lays around and does nothing really.

Under the former head, Professor Fels, the ACCC took a pretty proactive role, and bounced around banging heads (where deserved) with gusto. Nowadays, it's toothless.

Right now in Australia, for example, we're being utterly rorted by the oil companies. They've somehow managed to set up a situation where a bunch of issues (some real, some just 'excuses') are whereby the price of petrol (gas?) at the pump is skyrocketing, and the oil companies are actually turning a couple of million dollars a day, per company, extra profit. This isn't passing on of costs from higher worldwide oil prices, this is actual rorting. The whole country is screaming out for the government and the ACCC to act by way of investigation and regulation as appropriate. The ACCC is just lying there "oh, er, this really isn't something we can involve ourselves in". FFS, this is the whole reason that the ACCC exists!!!

So yeah, end rant, back on topic... the ACCC has the power to act in a situation over misuse of the Linux name as you describe, but they will not ever actually get off their arses and do something!

Oy Weh!

[putko]

This one is so awful. From the looks of it, Linus Torvalds was forced to play the trademark game, because of a slimeball lawyer.

But it appears that because he didn't defend it from early on, he's now unable to claim it in Australia. So he should have been demanding money from all the Linux-name-using folks all these years if he wanted to become the trademark.

How ironic: to frustrate a lawyer slimeball at the behest of his users, Mr. Torvalds makes himself look silly in front of the court.

To get an idea of how scummy the first lawyer was:

Torvalds didn't plan on gaining trademark protection for the word "Linux" when he began work on his OS, but by 1996 he started wishing he had. That's when William R. Della Croce Jr. of Boston first started demanding 10 percent royalties on sales from Linux vendors, based on a trademark claim he had filed in 1994. The Linux kernel was still free software, but according to Della Croce, the name itself was his property.

That's 10 percent! What a parasite! It makes me think he deserves the Mr. Hands treatment.