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EFF Says Mark Shuttleworth Is Wrong About Trademark
sfcrazy writes "Last week Canonical sent a cease and desist letter to EFF staffer Micah F Lee asking him to remove the word Ubuntu from the URL as well as the Ubuntu logo from the site. Lee responded through an attorney who said that Canonical's 'request were not supported by trademark laws and interferes with protected speech.' Shuttleworth apologized, though it was cheeky, and while he dubbed the Mir opponents as non-technical (hello KDE, systemD, Wayland, Intel) he also went on to explain why they needed to protect their trademark. Now there is an official response from EFF. In the blog post EFF has explained that Shuttleworth is far from reality and was totally wrong about trademark."
I think you might be confusing patent and trademark.
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
sfcrazy writes "Last week Canonical sent a cease and desist letter to EFF staffer Micah F Lee asking him to remove the word Ubuntu from the URL as well as the Ubuntu logo from the site.
Dear sfcrazy: You have used the word Ubuntu in your article. Please be advised that there is a chance now that some crazy folken at Canonical may approach you with a C&D letter, over the use of their 'holy' name; prithee take care.
Strict enforcement of intellectual property laws is what open source is all about!
Remind me not to do business with Canonical. (1) I don't like to support over-active legal departments, and (2) they're liable to sue me.
Did Microsoft order all glass companies to quit using the word "windows"? Or, to put it another way, "[citation needed]"!
I believe with trademarks context is everything. I can go to a store and buy an apple (the fruit), but if I buy an "Apple" electronic device, if it isn't made by Apple Inc (the computer company), then lawyers will be coming down hard! (There is also Apple Corps Ltd, owned by the Beatles. There have been trademark disputes between Apple Inc and Apple Corp Ltd, none of which will affect you buying apples (the fruit)),
Interestingly, the article itself said that although it believed Shuttleworth was wrong, it didn't believe he meant any malice.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. - Blake
In consideration of recent coverage of the matter, and referencing my previous /. comment on an attempt to promote open source operating systems to kids via kites, I think I'll just go ahead and start producing small scale production of kites with the Ubuntu logo on them. After all, my goal is to support introducing people to Ubuntu, and I honestly don't care what the entity known as Canonical thinks about this anymore. If they care enough, they can sue me if they want, and they can explain it to my kids later. Doing this today, I'll be sure to include a kite with a Debian sail with each Ubuntu kite, just to be sure kids know what Ubuntu is derived from and give credit where it's due.
Write failed: Broken pipe
He did non call the Mir opponents non-technical. He appologized for calling non-technical critics of Mir the "Open Source Tea Party". That's quite a difference.
you know it is possible to use an ipad and linux on another system without exploding, right?
even windows too...
Trying it right now, as it happens. Here we g-aarghh!
Further I'm interested by the fact that there is quite a lot of talk about first amendment, but considering that Cannonical is not based in the US the perspective is alittle different. I have tried to use company logos in publications in Sweden, and it was really hard, you are not allowed to print logos without premissions. While the creator of the website might be from the US I don't know that, but I guess it's easy to check.
I guess the question is would I think the same if this was about Apple or Windows.
He's not talking about those people, he means the thousands of screaming idiots that act like football fans over if vi or emacs is the superior text editor, except these people are much worse then the past text editor wars. Today we have thousands of people bitching about "how dare Canonical not use Wayland, Upstart, Unity" as though open source was only about using what Redhat shits out.
Sesostris III noted:
There is also Apple Corps Ltd, owned by the Beatles. There have been trademark disputes between Apple Inc and Apple Corp Ltd, none of which will affect you buying apples (the fruit)).
And Apple Computer was forced to negotiate a settlement with Apple Corps Ltd in every suit the Beatles' company filed. (They were all related to iTunes, which is all about music - and the Beatles worldwide trademark was established in 1968, so Apple Computers' conflicting mark had no legal leg to stand on.)
Trademarks are, for the most part, geographically limited, and apply fairly narrowly to the product or service to which the mark applies. Thus the Saturn automobile company, the Sega Saturn console, and Saturn Internet Services ALL had trademarks on the name Saturn. None of them conflicted with each other, because each represented a different category of product (cars vs. game consoles) or service (an ISP). Very few trademarks are global. Apple Computer is, and so is Apple Corps Ltd. The conflict arose when Apple Computer decided to get into the music business - and ran into a trademark the Beatles had established more than thirty years earlier. So Steve Jobs changed the service's name to iTunes, paid Apple Corps an undisclosed (but clearly substantial) amount of money, and signed a quitclaim agreement to make it all go away. Once that happened, negotiations began between Apple Corps and Apple Computer to make the Beatles' music available on iTunes - which it now is.
In other news, Shuttleworth over-fucking-reached in a major way. The EFF has set him straight. Let's hope he stays that way.
Unless, y'know, he's gay.
Check out my novel.
Shuttleworth/Canonical are just using the Facebook playbook:
1. Engage in an outrageous overreach.
2a. If there's no reaction: proceed.
2b. If there's a negative reaction, then walk it back just far enough to quell the outrage. Use weasel words. Pretend that you were just kidding. Call it an unfortunate oversight, a lapse, a mistake -- but be sure not to admit that it was deliberate and calculated.
3. Wait for outrage to die down.
4. Return to step 1.
This works beautifully on an audience that isn't paying attention, that can't generalize from specifics, that doesn't remember what happened yesterday, let alone last year or last decade.
Actually the parent is not quite right. Wikipedia has a good summary. The first litigation began in 1978, when Apple Corps. sued Apple over the trademark. This was long before iTunes. The 1981 settlement involved a payment (later found to be $80,000) to Apple Corps by Apple Computer, Apple Computer agreed not to get into the music business and Apple Corps agreed not to get into the computer business.
This led to a series of additional litigation when Apple Computers began to support music and later video publishing with a synth card in the Apple IIGS (effectively ending that product's lifecycle). And again when Apple included a sampled system sound in the OS, and a couple more times over various ways to distinguish what the two companies do, and most recently when the iTunes project reared its head.
Some of these suits were settled, others went to trial. To at least some extent it is necessary - boundaries sometimes need to be set. Ideally this would be done by negotiation, arbitration, and litigation in that order. IMHO this process is just a way of establishing boundaries and testing the other party's willingness to defend their turf. It is just like kids in the playground establishing which part is 'owned' by which clique, and similar to what nations do - today the Russians are flying bombers over the border between Sweden and Russia, basically testing Sweden's resolve and response time. The Russians/Soviets and the US have done that with each other for years. And the US Navy regularly sails their ships through areas like the China Sea, maintaining the 'right of innocent passage' in territorial waters.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Very hard to believe. The case would have literally no merit at all. In order for a case like this to succeed, the two companies have to be competing in the same line of business. The conflict between Apple (computer) and Apple (records) arose because Apple (computer) moved into the music publishing biz with iTunes. Otherwise it would never have happened.
I have been a fan of Ubuntu for a while, but Shuttleworth's antics are increasingly turning me off of it. It seems to me that while he likes to benefit from the advantages of open-source development, he really doesn't care about the fundamental philosophies behind it.