Deadline

[Luke Schierer]

On Sun, Apr 08, 2007 at 09:35:21PM -0500, Gary Kramlich wrote:
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> Richard Laager wrote:
> > On Sun, 2007-04-08 at 18:17 -0700, Sean Egan wrote:
> >> Also, we may now start using ™ in
> >> conjunction with the word Pidgin as a precursor to registering a
> >> trademark, if we decide to do that. Thoughts?
> > 
> > I'd like to avoid the stupid ™ unless it's necessary from a legal
> > perspective. I think we should register Pidgin as a trademark, unless
> > the fees are really excessive.
> > 
> > Richard
> 
> If we do trademark it, are we going to seem similar problems to the
> firefox/iceweasel and so on issues that debian and mozilla recent went
> through?

Potentially.  Trademarks must be defended or they are lost.  They may be
licensed, but there are legal requirements (iirc, ianal) on what the
terms of that license can be.  Mozilla decided that the only way to
avoid losing their trademark would be to license it only with terms that
debian would not accept. 

I am unsure that Mozilla's interpretation of trademark law is the only
possible one, or the "right" one (with law stuff, there is generally a
right and a wrong answer, or at least a more right and less right).  It
is something we will have to look into and consider.

luke