GNOME Project Seeks Donations For Trademark Battle With Groupon

Drinking Bleach writes Groupon has released a tablet-based point of sale system called Gnome, despite the well-known desktop environment's existence and trademark status. This is also not without Groupon's internal knowledge of the GNOME project; they were contacted about the infringement and flatly refused to change the name of their own product, in addition to filing many new trademark applications for theirs. The GNOME project is seeking donations to help them in a legal battle against these trademark applications, and to get Groupon to stop using their name. They are seeking at least $80,000 to challenge a first set of ten trademark applications from Groupon, out of 28 applications that have been filed.

Comments

If this were ten years ago, I would have

[Anonymous Coward]

If this were ten years ago, I would have donated my first month's paycheck. But ever since GNOME decided "We'll do what we want. We don't care about the users", I care a lot less about GNOME. Now if Groupon had come out with a tablet named XFCE, then maybe...

Re:If this were ten years ago, I would have

[juanfgs]

No, what they are saying is that they are the major contributors, which is actually true. So GTK is catering more and more to THEIR needs. Of course, this being Slashdot we should force their developers do things that WE like, despite us not contributing a single line of code.

I disagree with many of the design principles of the new gnome, but they are not obligated to focus their resources on a path that they don't want to follow. I don't see anyone giving shit to the people at Englihtenment desktop for writing a toolkit (EFL) that looks foreign on any other desktop environment.

Open source used to be about scratching your own itch, not forcing other people to solve your problems. If XFCE/LXDE likes GTK 3 but not in the way gnome devs want, publish patches to GTK3 allowing their code. If their patches are rejected, then we can really talk of gnome devs being a little dickish, but still the solution in that case is forking.

Then again, is easier to complain on the internet than to actually contribute code.

Re:If this were ten years ago, I would have

[nadaou]

Hear hear. If one of the biggest and best known names in the FOSS world can't defend themselves from something so blatant it just encourages other big corporations from abusing smaller groups.

Red hat, we're looking at you to step up here.

The Systemd and GNOME3 toxic manouvers are irrelevant.

Why feed the lawyers?

[Brian Kendig]

One is a desktop environment. The other is a tablet-based point of sale system. Who's going to confuse the two? "I wanted to install GNOME on my laptop, but instead it's asking me if I want to redeem a coupon."

Is GNOME going to challenge anyone who calls anything a gnome?

Re:Why feed the lawyers?

[PhilHibbs]

If they called it "Windows", do you think they would last a nanosecond before the orbital lawyers opened fire?

Let lawyers do it free, in exchange for % damages?

[ad454]

I don't understand. It seems that there is a clear-cut case for GNOME, that should guarantee victory.

How come in the USA with its huge surplus of lawyers, they aren't some willing to take the case for free, in exchange for a percentage of damages against a publicly traded company like GroupOn? I am surprised that a publicly traded company would take such a risk which could diminish shareholder value.

Or it only scumbags like SCO/Novel which are allowed to sue?

Re:Let lawyers do it free, in exchange for % damag

[AlecC]

It may seem clear cut to you, but it does not seem so to me nor several other contributors.

A Trademark does not provide a universal protection for the word, only within a limited, named, commercial field. Sun Oil and Sun Computers co-existed using the name Sun. Gnome has trademarked the word for software and seoftware related services. Groupon's tablet is not software. No overlap.

Trademark breadth

[tepples]

Trademarks are usually valid within a specific field of use. But the more famous the mark becomes, the broader the judge will construe exclusivity. For example, something like "COCA-COLA" is so famous that Coke's lawyers will have no trouble making a prima facie case for dilution if the mark is used for any other product. Mozilla had to rename Firebird to Firefox even though database software and web browser software aren't exactly the same field. But whether the "GNOME" mark applies to useful computer software in general or to GUI frameworks in particular is for a judge to decide after the GNOME project's counsel presents its case.

Re:Trademark breadth

[ShadowRangerRIT]

How does that make sense? The risk of brand theft is higher with a more widely recognized product. If I introduce Coca Cola branded headphones (to name one of the few things Coca Cola doesn't stick their name on yet AFAIK), my sales would be boosted by the brand name association Coca Cola built, not the merits of my product. That's why trademark protections exist; to avoid borrowing/stealing/damaging (if the product sucks) other companies' reputations unfairly.

Re:Trademark breadth

[Blaskowicz]

Quote from the first link : "When it's complete, Gnome will serve as an operating system for merchants to run their entire operation and enable them to create real-time promotions that bring customers into their business when they need them the most."

It's really a top-level, self-contained GUI versus a top level, self-contained GUI.
Both have significant underlying libraries, GUI toolkit probably, built-in apps - Gnome speaks of "Gnome OS" even. (a rough analogy would be like it's Windows 3.1 on top of DOS. Groupon must be using something be it linux, a BSD variant, QNX etc.)

Huh? What trademark?

[SEE]

Thought they already changed the name of the desktop environment to MATE

Re:IANL

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME: Desktop Environment recently focused on a GUI optimized for touch/tablet interfaces.
Gnome: Point Of Sale running on a tablet with customized GUI.

Two different GUI's running on a tablet with the same name. That's overlapping to me.