Logo -- let's move on ... the legal loophole of "Fedora(TM)" for Red Hat

Jeff Spaleta jspaleta at gmail.com
Wed Aug 24 03:29:26 UTC 2005


On 8/23/05, Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org> wrote:
> You're damn straight.  I'm really concerned that the word "Fedora" can
> and will become an enforcement issue for Red Hat.  Why hasn't anyone
> else thought of this?

Don't you mean.. why hasn't anyone made a big public fuss about it in
a mailinglist like you are doing.  How about you WAIT for the details
of the foundation to be made public.  The foundation doesn't exist
yet..so how about you stick to second guessing existing institutions
and organizations and leave the crystal ball reading of the future to
the professionals like me.
Once the foundation does exist...and you have had a chance to read
through all the related legal paperwork associated with constructing
the non-profit entity and the transfer of assets..then please...if
there are any specific unresolved legal issues you want to discuss
with the boardmembers..do it then...don't do it now while no one other
than the people working on the paperwork can comment. And frankly I'd
MUCH rather have them concentrating on the paperwork than fending off
imagined problems about how the trademarks are going to be
transferred.

As it stands... the decision about the project name has been made...
the decision about "no hats" logo has been made. Sorry you didn't get
to have the final say about those decisions..but they were made..and
thats that. We can not continue to hashout the SAME dicussion every
month. Actually I thought this logo topic was now a little past being
worthwhile, the original purpose of coming up with ideas has been
served and the designers have been tasked to actually do something
that doesn't suck. At least that's what I read from the marketing
meeting minutes and from other posts.

As far as I can tell this past weeks discussion about logos has been a
wee bit self-indulgent.. and frankly has gone on way too long to serve
anything but frustration if the design team really has been tasked to
deal with it now.  The tagential legal issues that you are bringing at
this late date are just dragging the purpose of this list backwards
not forwards. If you are itching to do something constructive i
suggest you read over the last marketing meeting minutes and look at
the defined action items and see if you can help out specifically with
one of them. You will of course probably disappointed that none of the
action items was "second guess the yet-to-be-created foundation's
ability to manage and its ip assets"

-jef

-jef

> 
> The whole reason I thought the Fedora Foundation could even continue use
> the word "Fedora" as a trademark was because Red Hat would maintain
> control over it, or somehow authorize/license the Fedora Foundation.  If
> that is not the case, illustrations are not the problem!
> 
> > This is not a mailing list for legal discussions. Kindly take it elsewhere
> 
> Okay, which list?  Seriously, this is a serious, serious issue.
> 
> I'm not a lawyer, but I do a lot of consulting all over the US and sign
> dozens of contracts a year.  Some of them deal with the serious misuse
> of trademarks, so I'm a bit dumbfounded.
> 
> If I'm running the Fedora Foundation, it would be my #1 concern right
> now.  I'm being 0% argumentative.  What is the guarantee that the Fedora
> Foundation does not have its trademark become the victim of enforcement
> issues?
> 
> 
> --
> Bryan J. Smith     b.j.smith at ieee.org     http://thebs413.blogspot.com
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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