The current Trademark License Agreement is unacceptable

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Christoph
Wickert<christoph.wickert at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Am Freitag, den 28.08.2009, 08:30 -0500 schrieb Mike McGrath:
>>
>> Honestly as someone who's not involved in this at all and just watching
>> from the outside, it seems like y'all are working hard to find ways to
>> make this not work instead of the other way around.
>
> First of all I'm not really involved ether, because I do not own a
> Fedora* domain. I am member of the Fedora Project and I work hard to get
> the wider community, e. g. people running sites about Fedora involved in
> the Fedora project or to at least enhance the cooperation between them
> and the project. I *want* them to sign a contract, but unfortunately I
> cannot recommend signing the TLA in it's current form, even as a member
> of the project who believes in Red Hat's good will.
>
> Second: Please don't use generalizations like "you all". My position is
> different from Robert's or Richard's for example. But I share their
> concerns, at least to a certain degree.
>
>> After these questions
>> are answered, will you come up with some more?
>
> Not sure about others, but I cannot tell anybody to sign a contract if
> he still has questions.
>

Can you tell them to get professional advice versus asking on a mailing list?

1) Translations of legal documents are not used because they may not
convey things properly in the language or legally binding aspects of
that country. Its why the GPL had all the disclaimers about the
English version being the only legal version and the translations may
be wrong and not to be trusted.

2) There is a reason why IANAL is one of the oldest acronym's in
Internet history. Giving/getting advice on a mailing list is a
lose-lose situation. The advice is given by people who have no idea
how the law really works and usually expect it to act like logic when
it does not. And the people who are looking for it are at worst headed
for disaster and best going to get a real lawyer.

3) Trademark law is not like copyright, patent, or other intellectual
laws... The onus is on the owner of the trademark to police their
'mark' stringently and it is up to usually a jury to decide if they
did it enough or not.  Selective enforcement is not possible and in
fact subletting out trademark in any format is usually frowned on
heavily. Trademark law is a country by country thing or in germany
state by state (Bavarian trademark rules may be different from
Holstein rules and what is considered enforcing enough is different
etc).


-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp. Or what's a heaven for?
-- Robert Browning