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Canonical Targets Ubuntu Privacy Critic
New submitter bkerensa writes "A member of Canonical's Legal Team recently sent a email to a critic of Ubuntu's privacy settings to insist he stop using the Ubuntu name and logo, even though it falls under 'fair use.' Micah Lee is the CTO of the Freedom of the Press Foundation and maintainer of the HTTPS Everywhere project. When Ubuntu began adding commercial results in its Dash search software, Lee wrote about the privacy concerns and created a site called Fix Ubuntu to show people how to turn it off. Canonical's legal department has now sent him a letter asking him to 'remove [the] Ubuntu word from you[r] domain name and Ubuntu logo from your website.'"
You're the one that is confused.
The fair use concept also applies to trademarks. You seem to be laboring under the false "virtual property" notion that much of the current pro-corporate propaganda focuses on these days.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Mint.
It is (or used to be, I haven't looked at it for a while) based on Ubuntu. So, you can use most things that are designed for said most popular Linux distro, while also actually having a pleasant default desktop setup to start from.
which is totally what she said
Is there a chance that somebody might mistake his website for Ubuntu, or is it clear that his website is talking about Ubuntu?
If Canonical is selling out its users' privacy for paid placement of results, then criticism is fair and use of the term "Ubuntu" is unavoidable (unlike actually using Ubuntu, which is completely avoidable). If Canonical is using legal threats to silence its critics who have truthful complaints, then all the more reason to do so.
People use trademarked terms and logos *all the time* when talking about the respective products. Sometimes they have a "duh" disclaimer when they do. I'm not sure if this disclaimer, currently on the site, is new or not, but it's clear:
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Did you reply to the wrong comment, or are you intentionally hijacking it because it's high up the thread?
Trademark fair use is something different; you have to show that the use is purely descriptive, using only the primary meaning (ie the everyday English language meaning), not the secondary meaning (ie identifying the product).
Wrong, trademarks can be used to identify the product or service. There is even case law to support this. See New Kids on the Block v. News Am. Pub., Inc., 971 F.2d 302 (9th Cir. 1992) where USA Today's use of the New Kids on the Block trademark was upheld because it was used only so much as to identify them.
To be sure, this is not the classic fair use case where the defendant has used the plaintiff's mark to describe the defendant's own product. Here, the New Kids trademark is used to refer to the New Kids themselves. We therefore do not purport to alter the test applicable in the paradigmatic fair use case. If the defendant's use of the plaintiff's trademark refers to something other than the plaintiff's product, the traditional fair use inquiry will continue to govern. But, where the defendant uses a trademark to describe the plaintiff's product, rather than its own, we hold that a commercial user is entitled to a nominative fair use defense provided he meets the following three requirements: First, the product or service in question must be one not readily identifiable without use of the trademark; second, only so much of the mark or marks may be used as is reasonably necessary to identify the product or service; [FN7] and third, the user must do nothing that would, in conjunction with the mark, suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark holder.
So now Ubuntu's lawyers don't read their own legal policy http://www.canonical.com/intellectual-property-policy . I looked into it when I wrote a blog post about Canonical going bankrupt eventually.
Note:
"You can use the Trademarks in discussion, commentary, criticism or parody, provided that you do not imply endorsement by Canonical."
So not only is it fair use it also is ok under their own intellectual trademark policy.. Talk about one hand not knowing what the other is doing.
No, no it isn't. It's nominative use: he isn't using the logo to represent his own product, but to literally refer to the product Canonical is producing. That is fair use. In fact, it strengthens Canonical's trademark: the more people using it to refer to Ubuntu itself, the stronger the trademark is. Same reason Wikipedia can use all the logos of various companies and products on it's wiki pages about them: because it is literally referring to the trademarked product itself, not to some imitation or misrepresentation of the product.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
> They cant pick and choose.
In fact they MUST pick and choose. To avoid losing their mark, they need to be proactive about instances that could be considered infringement.
They can allow certain users and decline others. What they can't do, under the law, is ignore potential infringement - they are supposed to either allow it or object to it.
One way they do that is through the published policy, which grants people the right to use their trademark in specific ways:
http://www.canonical.com/intellectual-property-policy
One thing their policy explicitly grants permission for is:
You can use the Trademarks in discussion, commentary, criticism or parody, provided that you do not imply endorsement by Canonical.
It seems to me this use was already authorized under that published statement of permission.