En 1999, Linus a été critiqué pour avoir demandé à certains sites de ne plus utiliser la marque Linux. Voici le message dans lequel il expliqua le pourquoi. En résumé, la loi US oblige à défendre activement sa marque pour ne pas la perdre.
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Ok,
I've been getting tons of email about the trademark thing due to the action of stopping the auctioning off of linux-related names, so instead of just answering individually (which was how I started out), I'll just send out a more generic email. And hope that slashdot etc pick it up so that enough people will be reassured or at least understand the issues.
[...]
Basically, the rules are fairly simple, and there really are just a few
simple basic issues involved:
[...]
- Trademark law requires that the trademark owner police the use of the trademark (unlike, for example, copyright law, where the copyright owner is the copyright owner, always is, and always will be unless he willingly relinquishes ownership, and even THEN he ends up having rights).
This is nasty, because it means, for example, that a trademark owner has to be shown as caring about even small infringements, because otherwise the really bad guys can use as their defense that "hey, we may have misused it, but look at those other cases that they didn't go after, they obviously don't care.."
- Even with things that aren't scams or something like that, VALID uses of "Linux" may be bad if they mean that other valid uses of "Linux" are blocked.
# Droit des marques - Qu'en dit Linus?
Posté par oliv . En réponse à la dépêche Mandrake vs Mandrake. Évalué à 6.
"
Ok,
I've been getting tons of email about the trademark thing due to the action of stopping the auctioning off of linux-related names, so instead of just answering individually (which was how I started out), I'll just send out a more generic email. And hope that slashdot etc pick it up so that enough people will be reassured or at least understand the issues.
[...]
Basically, the rules are fairly simple, and there really are just a few
simple basic issues involved:
[...]
- Trademark law requires that the trademark owner police the use of the trademark (unlike, for example, copyright law, where the copyright owner is the copyright owner, always is, and always will be unless he willingly relinquishes ownership, and even THEN he ends up having rights).
This is nasty, because it means, for example, that a trademark owner has to be shown as caring about even small infringements, because otherwise the really bad guys can use as their defense that "hey, we may have misused it, but look at those other cases that they didn't go after, they obviously don't care.."
- Even with things that aren't scams or something like that, VALID uses of "Linux" may be bad if they mean that other valid uses of "Linux" are blocked.
Those are the kind of ground rules, I think everybody can pretty much agree with them..
[...]
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Le message complet, beaucoup plus long, peut être lu en:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=94827313516750&a(...)