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On Sat, Dec 21, 2013 at 3:42 PM, Matthew Summers |
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<quantumsummers@g.o> wrote: |
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> Our trademark registration for both the wordmark "GENTOO" and our "G" |
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> Logo are perpetual (as of last year's filing) and cover national (USA) |
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> and applicable international usage (i.e. with countries we have |
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> treaties with governing this sort of thing). I am not aware of what |
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> Friends of Gentoo eV has in the way of a trademark. However based on |
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> the statements of our representative (Fenwick & West) to the USPTO, I |
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> was led to believe that the Gentoo Foundation Inc is the sole owner of |
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> the aforementioned marks. |
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> |
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> If there is a need I can contact our rep for clarification. |
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My understanding is that US courts don't really recognize the |
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jurisdiction of any other courts. If some company that generally does |
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business outside the US happens to have any property at all in the US |
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or a country the US has a lot of influence over and they harm the |
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Gentoo mark, legally we could probably do bad things to them. The |
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reach of the US isn't infinite, of course, but it goes pretty far. |
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I'm not commenting at all as to whether we should do such things, or |
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whether US courts should be the way they are - I'm speaking mainly to |
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our options. |
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I guess my point is that in the US trademarks are very well-protected. |
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Hence we should be careful about implying that our mark is weaker |
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than it actually is, because that will actually make it weaker. My |
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understanding is that as far as any US court is concerned there is |
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only one Gentoo on the entire planet and it is the Gentoo Foundation, |
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unless we actually limit ourselves. |
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All that said, it would probably make sense at some point to try to |
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combine with the e.V. or at least come to some kind of agreement on |
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scope for the two organizations. As far as I'm aware the Gentoo |
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Foundation is the only one footing the day-to-day bills and if I had |
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to guess I'd say the majority of our funding for conferences/etc goes |
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to Europe as well. I'm sure the e.V. does great things too. |
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Rich |
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