[OSGeo-Board] FW: shirt logos

[Frank Warmerdam]

Jennifer Daehler wrote:
> The organization should also be "policing" how others use its
> trademarks.  Policing can be forceful or gentle.  

Jennifer,

I'm quite interested how to do policing gently.

> This organization seems to care greatly about participating in
> tradeshows, writing articles and interacting with other groups in this
> space -- why bother if you aren't recognized for who you are?  And why
> would other groups want your participation and contributions if they
> don't come to recognize the integrity/value/quality etc. of what you
> have to offer?

Well, I don't think we are in any immediate danger of imitators calling
themselves OSGeo.  Nevertheless, I'm in favor of taking prudent steps to
protect ourselves.

> I had prepared some suggested trademark guidelines for the organization
> some time back.  I am attaching these guidelines here -- they are in
> draft form. 

I have read them over (now), and I have a few questions.  They include:

"""
Please Do Not:
You may not use our trademarks:
  o In, as, or as part of your own trademarks
  o To identify products or services that are not ours
  o In a manner likely to cause confusion
  o In a manner that implies inaccurately that we sponsor or endorse, or
    are otherwise connected with, your own activities, products, and
    services
"""

OK, these seem sensible.

"""
We also ask the following:
  o Please keep our trademarks distinct from other text, images, or material
  o Please do not alter, edit, modify, or combine our trademarks
"""

I'm not clear how we can ask people to keep OSGeo distinct from other
text.  What does that mean?  Can folks not use OSGeo in a sentence?

"""
Also, our trademarks are adjectives (brand names) modifying nouns
(the generic service or product type). As a result:
  o Please do not use our trademarks as nouns or verbs
  o Please do not pluralize our trademarks
  o Please do not hyphenate our trademarks
  o Please do not render our trademarks possessive through use of an apostrophe
"""

These I found very confusing.  I use OSGeo as a noun all the time.
Essentially I use it as a proper name for the organization and to
the best of my recollection proper names are nouns.   I was going to
give some examples of possessive use of OSGeo too, but on reflection
I can see that those can be mostly turned into adjective use.
For instance referring to "the OSGeo booth" as opposed to "OSGeo's booth".
I'm still not sure why the above set of rules is important.

The rules on how to use OSGeo include this statement:

"""
In contrast, you do not need to use a trademark notice if you are making 
reference to the Open Source Geospatial Foundation or OSGeo as the name of our 
entity (rather than to denote our services or products) because this is not 
considered a “trademark use.”
"""

I personally don't understand the distinction.  One thing I
don't want to have to do is add (tm) every time I use OSGeo
in email, presentations, web sites, wiki pages or IRC.  I'm
afraid I just don't counts as using OSGeo as the name of the
entity as opposed to denoting services or products.   Clarification
would be appreciated.

At this point, I would like to offer a small personal anecdote.

Once upon a time I had some discussions with a company called
Mapping Science that wanted to promulgate a standard mechanism
for incorporating georeferencing information in JPEG2000 files.
I was interested in cooperation to ensure that only one "standard"
came into common use.  While I was able to convince Mapping Science
to release the specification under reasonable terms, they chose
to trademark the name (GeoJP2(tm)).

On the face of it, this didn't necessarily seem terrible. But in
the following months I found myself in a state of constant confusion
as to when I needed to append (tm) after using the phrase GeoJP2 (tm),
and whether I was supposed to put some little blurb (as you have
suggested in your guidelines) at the bottom of every email.  I got
into the habit of referring to the "format" as GeoTIFF-in-JPEG2000
much of the time just to avoid the legal hassles with full compliance.

So the reason I mention this, is that the act of trademarking
something seemed to suddenly inject a great deal of "legalism",
uncertainty and negative karma around the whole effort.  It was
a definite drag on adoption and buzz.

A second anecdote - though not really a personal one.  As has been
mentioned, Linux is a trademark owned by Linus and operated by Linux
International (I could be wrong on the details).  This was originally
done to protect Linux from improper use, and especially to ensure that
no one could claim control of it against the "real" Linux.  However,
it seems that to retain it, Linux International was required to enforce
it, which apparently included protecting it and in many circumstances
requiring someone to sign something to use the trademark.

This became an issue because Linux International suggested that the
Debian project ought to be licensing it for use in Debian Linux.  SPI
(Software in the Public Interest - the foundation umbrella for Debian
Linux, and which I am a member) debated this at some length.  I'm not
clear on the final outcome - I think SPI and Debian just ignored the
request.  But it caused a huge amount of rancour and negativity.

I raise these anecdotes as cautionary tales about the danger that can
come from enforcement, even in quite well intentioned situations.
Second, to emphasize that we need to come up with usage terms that will
not seem onerous or offensive to normal folks (assuming we want to
consider them trademarked).

Allan seems to raise some reasonable points about projects and organizations
that don't seem to pursue trademark protection.  I'm still quite confused
about what protection we need or what is accomplished by trademarking.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGF, http://osgeo.org