Why trademark Open Source software

I made a walkthrough on cheaply registering a trademark without an attorney. It’s a couple years old now and the rules and processes may have changed. But for what it’s worth. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tidwall&#x2F;uspto-trademark" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tidwall&#x2F;uspto-trademark</a>

Here&#x27;s the problem. The article does not say what you have to do to trademark something, but it does point to an article on a law firm site: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.legalteamusa.net&#x2F;trademark-law-first-to-use-v-first-to-file&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.legalteamusa.net&#x2F;trademark-law-first-to-use-v-fi...</a>. The site says that you get trademark rights once you &quot;use the mark in commerce&quot;. It then goes on to suggest that &quot;use in commerce&quot; means an actual sale. There&#x27;s more here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cohnlg.com&#x2F;trademark-use-in-commerce-heres-how-it-works&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cohnlg.com&#x2F;trademark-use-in-commerce-heres-how-i...</a><p>So, what does this mean in an open source context? How can you meet the &quot;use in commerce&quot; requirement if you never actually offer anything for sale?

I think its important to understand what you are also getting into with a trademark. They mention:<p><pre><code> actively asserted and defended in order to have legal meaning. </code></pre> This is a critical piece of owning a trademark. It must be defended which means that you have to issue cease and desist letters, normally engaging an attorney to do so, or else you risk losing your trademark altogether or it becoming genericized, i.e. &#x27;Kleenex&#x27;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Generic_trademark" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Generic_trademark</a>

This is spot-on! It took a year to get our trademarks for our open source software, including negotiating with another claimant and waiting for yet another potential claimant to drop out of the race. It was not fun or cheap but totally worth it.<p>I just got our &quot;ribbon copy&quot; (with the gold seal) yesterday!

Fully agree. Some distros are packaging my software with bad patches constantly and then ignore requests to rename the package to make it clear that it&#x27;s a fork.<p>Unfortunately for small projects registering a trademark is just not feasible. I have considered going from actual open source to source available though.

Can anyone recommend articles that focus more on past examples of bad behavior, and that motivate each abstract principle with examples of behavior that principle aims to guide. This article and the articles linked seem very vague. Maybe some legal literature?

Yep, years ago I was loosely involved (as a Koha developer working for one of the organisations involved) in this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rnz.co.nz&#x2F;news&#x2F;national&#x2F;230631&#x2F;koha-trademark-case-won-by-nz-trust" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rnz.co.nz&#x2F;news&#x2F;national&#x2F;230631&#x2F;koha-trademark-ca...</a><p>It was a lot of work by a lot of people involved to get the right conclusion, which (in 20&#x2F;20 hindsight) could perhaps have been avoided by doing it &quot;right&quot; in the first place.

I can&#x27;t view the article (seeing &quot;Error establishing a database connection&quot;). But isn&#x27;t trademark prohibitively expensive and (traditionally) applies to just one country?

The article explains why it&#x27;s important to trademark, but not how or more importantly if it makes sense for the majority of open source projects. If you need to hire a lawyer over several months to get a trademark, it&#x27;s probably only possible for companies that also publish open source software.

I mostly agree with the sentiment of the article and it&#x27;s fair enough to allow a Free Software project and its maintainers to defend themselves from being misrepresented by using trademarks.<p>This bit is trickier though:<p><i>Neither the terms “Open Source” nor “Free Software” are themselves trademarked, which unfortunately allows anyone to use them to describe anything – companies regularly exploit this to undermine public understanding of the freedoms which the words originally conveyed.</i><p>Should those terms have been trademarked in the past? They seem awfully generic and nebulous. Could you have even gotten a trademark for &quot;Open Source&quot; or &quot;Free Software&quot;? Do trademark registrations allow you to be specific about what these two terms mean?

I think setting up contributor license agreements (CLA) is a lot more important and valuable than getting a trademark.<p>We had an open source business without having CLAs in place and it took several months to get everyone who contributed (around 200 people) when we sold our company.<p>CLA Assistant easily plugs into any Github repository to make this painless.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cla-assistant.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cla-assistant.io&#x2F;</a>

Error establishing a database connection<p>Did we crash their server?

Error establishing a database connection (TM)

Your cert is self-signed and (my) FireFox blocks the webpage.