BitTorrent to Sue Over Trademark

joe 155 writes "The people at BitTorrent are to begin to protect their rights through lawsuits if necessary: "The company will set the lawyers on anyone using the BitTorrent name, and trademark, if they are using it to distribute spyware or adware" They also plan to put into action a system where by people will have to pay a licence fee to use the name in the hope of cutting down on adware distribution."

Comments

Free Software?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wont this just hurt the makers of Free/OSS software? They're the ones who can't afford this type of thing. The adware people are the ones making money, and as such, can pay the fee.

Re:Free Software?

[tronicum]

Company president Ashwin Navin told ZDNet yesterday: "We're sensitive to people calling their software BitTorrent to achieve a certain level of popularity in order to distribute spyware and adware."

As long as the Software is not using the trade mark BitTorrent within its name, it should not be affected. And many have names distinct names ... (like Azureus)

A Torrent of Lawsuits

[kyouteki]

Bram Cohen obviously has the right to protect the name: the software is open source, the name is not. But more than that, he's protecting the reputation behind that name. He's not attacking the coders of Azureus, or even tracker-websites like UnrealTorrents that use part of the trademark in their name. No, he's going for people using his trademark maliciously...attacking spyware in the way that is easiest and best for him. Certainly this stirs more pots than just me running AdAware on my Windows box, no?

Re:A Torrent of Lawsuits

[raboofje]

Indeed.

Also, this is probably a message to the world (and possibly judges at some point...) that BitTorrent is mainly targeted to users with legitimate goals. That it is not purely a tool for pirates.

Re:WTF

[barawn]

Then people will stop calling it BitTorrent ... end of story.

Yes, I think that's kindof the idea.

Liability, and all that.

Re:Won't this hurt open-source clients?

[mwvdlee]

If it's a symbolic fee (say $1), somebody will probably be willing to cough it up for whatever the open source client is.

On the other hand, it will require everybody using it to be registered with BitTorrent!

If the registry requires the registrees to specify the purpose of using the name, they now have legally agreed not to use the name for any other purposes. Since "distributing adware/spyware" is obviously not an acceptible description, this will make those companies very easy to sue.

Call it something else.

[Colin Smith]

Different name, same thing... Happens all the time in all industries.

Re:WTF

[PFI_Optix]

For those who have a hard time grasping this concept, here's an analogy:

Imagine someone took Firefox, repackaged it as "Firefox Plus" with lots of adware/spyware, and Googlebombed their site so that it was the first result for "Firefox".

That's what's happening right now with BitTorrent. People are writing/repackaging BT clients with adware installers and doing their best to push them to the top of search engines. That way they get novice users who don't know any better to install their crap product. Then the novice user says "BitTorrent sucks, all it did was install adware on my PC and run like crap." It's directly harming BitTorrent's trademark, and they *should* be going after these creeps.

Part of a larger pattern

[jmorris42]

> Bram Cohen obviously has the right to protect the name: the software is open source, the name is not.

No. This is an example of a greater pattern of abuse that needs to be addressed soon, especially with GPL3 set to enshine it as acceptable practice.

What I'm talking about is this: Developer(s) toil away and produce Free Software. Software becomes popular. Developers suddenly file a trademark and begin to monitize it. See Linux(tm), Firefox(tm) and now BitTorrent(tm). Granted Linux isn't being heavily monitized YET but the shots have already went across the bow. Firefox has already told me to change the name in my RHEL rebuild. See a pattern? The problem is that the package is only known by its name, which until recently was freely usable so nobody has even given any thought what else to call it. Calling everything "The package formerly known as foo..." just doesn't scale.

I propose we forbid this practice. If commercial interests need a trademark that is understandable, but they should undertake the expense of focus groups to pick a new name and the PR to popularize it. This is especially important with BitTorrent since it is not just the name of a client but also the name of the protocol. So sorry Bram, you are a genius but you are wrong on this one. Pick a new trademark for your client or even new forked version of the protocol you want to lock up in an "IP" box.

Re:Part of a larger pattern

[URSpider]

No. This is an example of a greater pattern of abuse that needs to be addressed soon, especially with GPL3 set to enshine it as acceptable practice.

I have to disagree. These people aren't "monetizing" their trademarks. If you'd followed what Bram is doing, and read the FA, you'd know that he is trying to keep people from using the BitTorrent trademark to disseminate spyware and adware. As with Linux(TM) and Firefox(TM), the trademark is a tool to ensure the continued high quality and reliability of the Open-Source project. In your case in particular, Firefox can't exactly have hundreds of people distributing code that they call "Firefox," now can they? First thing you know, someone's hard drive gets wiped by a trojan lurking in one of those firefoxen, and panic ensues.

Re:Part of a larger pattern

[jmorris42]

> Firefox can't exactly have hundreds of people distributing code that they call "Firefox,"
> now can they?

Can't exactly have Free Software if we aren't allowed to redistribute binaries now can we? They need to decide which they are, a Free Software project or a proprietary product that is a free (small F) download sustained by advertising arrangements. And be not deceived by their prattle about quality control. They are interested in maintaining their co-branding agreements for default search engine and bookmarks and enforcing crap like this new spyware html tag they are introducing.

Don't believe me? Watch how many major distributions either remove the spyware tag or add a UI control to disable it, my money is on zero. When the stink finally becomes intense enough it will be revealed that the trademark license agreements they all signed forbids it.

It is time to ditch the Firefox brand name in the Free Software world and pick an unencumbered one. Yes it will create confusion in the marketplace, which is what Firefox is counting on btw, and RedHat and Suse will probably keep drinking the Kool-aid for a few years thus creating even more confusion. But the alternative is far worse. The alternative is they get away with it and a dozen more projects follow the allure of money. Next thing ya know a new distribution will be all but impossible to get off the ground because of the need for trademark lawyers. Of course RedHat and Suse wouldn't mind that world so perhaps they understand the situation perfectly.

We draw a line in the sand now or not at all because later will be too late.

Re:Part of a larger pattern

[jmorris42]

> Mozilla Foundation is using its Firefox trademark to ensure that all builds distributed
> as firefox are official builds

Official builds are for Windows. Almost nobody is using the 'official builds' on Free platforms, they use the packaged version from their distribution and anyone who has a clue knows they have been slightly customized to conform to that distribution's local customs regarding file location, desktop environment and often bookmarks, etc. You know it isn't from the Mozilla Foundation because the package has "whiteboxlinux.org" in the Vendor field instead of "Mozilla Foundation".

The problem is Firefox is a Windows app now, they care about the problems of Windows users, i.e. spyware, adware and other crap that aren't a problem on Free platforms. However they feel they have to enforce their trademark against Free platforms as well as Windows scumware vendors. Well maybe they do, but that is so not my problem and shouldn't be the problem of ANY Free Software project. Thus I'm calling for a consensus on a new name to call "The browser formerly known as Firefox" in the Free Software world. It just won't do if I yank something out of my butt and every other distro does likewise, it would lead to the mass confusion the Mozilla Project obviously desires.

Re:You've got trademark wrong...

[wile_e_wonka]

Ummm, this is wrong. For brands that are sufficiently strong, you can't use their name for anything. There are lots of factors to take into account, but you picked some particularly strong trademarks which make your example incorrect. This is because: imagine I start producing pajamas that say Coca-Cola on them. Even though Coca-Cola is a soft drink company, their trademark is so strong that if I made Coca-Cola pajamas somebody could perfectly reasonably think that the soft drink company distributed those pajamas. Because confusion is likely, my use of the trademark is illegal even though the goods are different. This is called "dilution" of a trademark.

BitTorrent doesn't have the strength Coca-Cola does, but it does have some things on it's side--for example the name is quite arbitrary, well known amongst the same type of people that would use these other "BiTorrent" things, and most of all *the impostors were intentionally trying to make money off BiTorrent's good name.*