From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 4581 invoked by alias); 8 May 2003 00:18:35 -0000 Mailing-List: contact ecos-maintainers-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: ecos-maintainers-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 4574 invoked from network); 8 May 2003 00:18:32 -0000 Message-ID: <3EB9A266.3030800@ecoscentric.com> Date: Thu, 08 May 2003 00:18:00 -0000 From: Alex Schuilenburg Organization: eCosCentric Limited User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en, en-gb MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jonathan Larmour CC: eCos Maintainers , Alex Schuilenburg Subject: Re: Patch policy References: <1052225944.30126.4370.camel@hermes> <20030506132550.GK24032@biferten.ma.tech.ascom.ch> <3EB7CAAF.4050807@eCosCentric.com> <3EB96CDB.5080405@eCosCentric.com> <1052344447.30126.14197.camel@hermes> <3EB99066.1030502@eCosCentric.com> <3EB99933.3060409@ecoscentric.com> <3EB99CD6.6060001@eCosCentric.com> In-Reply-To: <3EB99CD6.6060001@eCosCentric.com> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.74.0.0 X-Enigmail-Supports: pgp-inline, pgp-mime Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-SW-Source: 2003-05/txt/msg00022.txt.bz2 Jonathan Larmour wrote: [...] >>> Interestingly, the main s.r.c eCos and redboot websites have _never_ >>> mentioned trademarks, nor has the logo ever had a (TM) superscript. >>> The logo isn't a registered trademark AFAIK, so RH's legal protection >>> is minimal. >> >> >> >> Incorrect. ECOS and the logo are *both* registered trademarks of Red >> Hat, so be careful there. > > eCos is a *registered* trademark. The logo AFAIK isn't. The logo *is* since it contains the words ECOS and ECOS is a registered trademark of Red Hat. I should have been more specific: Under trademark law, colour, style, font, case, etc all are ignored if the text is trademarked. As such, the logo is just a stylised version of the text and hence is covered by the ECOS trademark. > > The TM superscript does indeed exist for the > >> logo on all handouts given away by Red Hat and Cygnus, > > > TM doesn't mean registered though.... specifically not in fact. I Correct. It can be trademarked under common law - just harder to prove/defend. > believe you that there may well have been handouts with the TM > superscript... in fact I've just looked and the stickers I have here do > have the TM I see. But the laxness in applying the TM as evidenced by > the existing public use of logos by Red Hat makes it very difficult to > enforce. *Very* incorrect. Red Hat are *very* serious when it comes to defending their trademarks, and the trademarks do not have to be registered as you pointed out. Not just the "Red Hat" trademark but other trademarks also. They have put companies out of business defending their trademark, the most recent was last March (IIRC) when they closed down some business that was selling versions of Linux with the same codename as their latest release. > > > and I have > >> correspondence from Mark Webbink verifying this. > > > He lumped the eCos registered trademark and other trademarks together if > you're referring to what I think you are. If you're referring to what I think you are, then no :-) And BTW, I believe you have to acknowledge trademarks by their owners. I don't think you can get away with "All registered Trade Marks are the property of their owners" anymore. Std practice though is to be told of the infringement so you have the opportunity to put things right. Just to be safe and proper, I do suggest you should put in a legal disclaimer. IANAL -- Alex > > Jifl