Slashdot Mirror
German Law Firm claims Linux Trademark
Andreas Spengler writes "Apparently
a german lawfirm has filed a claim with the
german patent office for the trademark Linux
in Germany.
It's still unknown what their goal is.
" The article is in German, as one would expect. Babelfish the article.
"As can be read in today's Heise Newsticker, we are currently registering a trademark for the name Linux at the German Patent Office in Munich. That is correct. The articel has lead to high tides and now we are partly alleged of having the intention to steal the trademark or gain advantages in any way out of this step.
We certainly realize that we cannot claim the trademark Linux, because it represents the community. If at all, it is the right of Linus Torvalds to claim the trademark. Furthermore, we realize, that we, even if we succeeded, wouldn't make many friends in the Linux community.
We have however heard rumors about another company exactly trying to do this. First we couldn't believe that the trademark Linux wasn't registered in Germany. Meeting our lawyer, we however realized it was in fact true. Without much thinking we simply applied for the trademark to ensure that noone with commercial intention does before us.
We of Channel One are friends of the Linux movement and we are far from making profit from it that we don't earn ourselves. In fact we are currently working on our own Linux distribution targeted at the Office User that we want to distribute next year to further increase the number of Linux users. Our self-written intranet-software Intraware also runs on Linux.
On the domain linux.channel-one.de we will publish a comic series with the Linux penguin as a protagonist shortly, to provide some entertainment to the Linux community. And as you can see on our homepage www.channel-one.de, we are also helping to enlarge the Linux community by other means."
End of translation
I hope that I did a readable translation (the other way is easier, i.e. English->German).
Sebastian
"Linux" soon no longer free?
The Hamburg patent lawyers Hauck, Graalfs, Wehnert have claimed the word "Linux" at the German patent office. This was acknowledged today by an employee of the 'Sozietat' upon a request from C'T. The German 'Markenblatt' (Listing of brand names) also lists the trademark. In edition number 36, published on 9.9.1999 (page 9919), Linux is listed under the document reference 399 36 517,6 in the category software.
Which aims trademark owner Roy Boldt has with the registration is unclear. The managing director of a Hamburg System House and the management consultation operation ChannelOne was unreachable by telephone today despite several attempts. Whether it concerns a new case of brand name snatching or perhaps an unselfish act, such as the one from an Austrian Linux trademark owner, remains unsure for the time being.
However Boldt cannot be sure of the name "Linux" just yet. According to US laws the trademarks have been property of Linux father Linus Torvalds since 1997. However, Torvalds had to take the matter to court to claim the rights for himself.
For now, the outcome of a comparable law case in Germany would be uncertain. According to information from the German patent office, trademark law is confined to the respective state borders. How things proceed in this country remains to be seen in the next weeks. On 9.12.99 the period for objections to the protection of the word "Linux" ends. Until then, everyone can make claim for a "relative obstacle to this word protection". The patent office is already prepared for such a case. The form designated "W7202" and meant for possible contenders has already been given a place on the Internet.
Disclaimer: I'm no lawyer, so I apologise for possible flaws in the technical terms.
Michiel
No, trademark law is certainly NOT international, although it's important to note that what happens in one country can affect what happens in another.
Trademark ownership in the USA does not imply trademark ownership in Germany. But it will be important to the case of the trademarking firm to demonstrate the use of their trademark in Germany (and in the USA). They can do neither, so unless the German trademark application process is extremely liberal, this can be easily opposed.
You may be thinking of copyright. Copyright is internationalized by the Berne Convention, a treaty which nearly all countries have signed. (The USA was one of the last holdouts, before anybody gets on a high horse.)
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Please stay calm first.
At the moment it's a little bit difficult with Trademark in's Germany. There's for example a Trademark on Y2K and on Webspace.
It's silly and obviously for money-grabbing. They even tried to auction the rights for Y2K on ebay.de. But in the last weeks, some people tried to register things like WWW or FvG(the initials of a german lawyer who is know to bring you to court if you don't follow trademark laws(for example the use of Triton referring to the Motherboard-Chipset or the Name Explorer (Microsoft signed a contract to use this name in Germany))).
So it's probably, that someone's registering linux before somebody evil can do this, if it's at all possible to register it. At the moment the trademark isn't registered yet, there's only a request for it.
Stay calm,
Keef
sorry for my english...