Comment by dannyobrien

2 days ago

It's fairly unusual for FLOSS projects to register any trademark, and (despite this lack of strict IP protection) it's also very unusual for the owner of a trademark to ask or require a FLOSS project to change their name because it violates a trademark. Not completely unheard of, but still rare.

I don't know why you decided to trademark your project name, but I think the biggest issue here is that trademark law is naturally the domain of IP rightsholders and an outlook that presumes and enforces scarcity when it comes to names, name spaces, and digital content.

There aren't that many reasons why FLOSS projects need to work within that same domain. My thought is that it is better to try and defend the environment of a digital commons that exists outside of them, than to enter into it and try to participate in a quite alien system of existing IP law, which has a lot of presumptions and standards that, as you say, don't really match the world you work within.

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dannyobrien

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marcjschmidt  2 days ago

> decided to trademark your project name

I decided to protect the name because I liked it and wanted to build upon it in the future. Be it OSS, or further commercial offerings.

I hoped to get also protection against corporations that just try to register the name or very similar ones and then decided to get me deleted or sue me for infringements.

In EU it's first to file principle, which means whoever holds the mark, has the right. This means if I would not have registered it, the company could just register "Deepkit" or "Deepki" and sue me to death. Now that I lost the trademark (not totally final, I can appeal), I risk getting sued for having a too similar name - which is exactly what I tried to avoid by having a registered trademark.

Did I make some mistakes with appealing and not collecting enough user data? Likely. Was it too naive from me? Yes. But I think reasonable and the whole idea behind trademarks is to protect projects like this. I could be wrong though, am not an expert.

  • mjmas  1 day ago

    At least Australia's trademark law allows continuing use if you were already using it, whether you registered it or not.

  • emmelaich  1 day ago

    If you keep the US trademark, they might eventually give up on the EU one.

    Or .. maybe you could sell it to them or use it as a lever to get the EU one.

ddtaylor  1 day ago

I disagree.

You will be asked to prove you have marks to do things like be listed in the app store. You need to prove your identity with third party legal companies that look into your company and the marks you are using. If you don't own those marks you probably won't get your app published.

Many examples come to mind, but basically anytime a FOSS app goes into the app stores, like KDE. In the past we mostly argued about who should be the person that has to act as the app owner etc. or created foundations or other legal entities to bridge this gap.

Look at elementaryOS as well. They attempted to assert rights to marks they don't own and it created a fiasco for them. They are virtually irrelevant now in the Linux space. All of the developers left the project besides one who is struggling with mental illness.

throwawaymaths  2 days ago

trademark as far as i know is the only form of IP that is actually rivalrous. that is: use by you deprives me of of my use. for example. suppose i started an (independent) mcdonalds restaurant and used their livery and had trashy service and poor customer service and cleanliness, this would damage (real) McDonald's reputation