Help the Gnome Foundation Defend the Gnome Trademark Against Groupon

Wow, all evidence suggests that the team in charge of this at Groupon is acting in bad faith, trying to bulldoze over a non-profit with fewer financial resources. (I doubt Groupon would ever attempt something like this against a financially-well-backed brand such as, say, &quot;Apple.&quot;)<p>Consider: (1) it&#x27;s essentially impossible that no one involved had ever heard of the Gnome desktop (it&#x27;s the top result when I search for &quot;gnome&quot; on Google); and (2) after being contacted by the Gnome Foundation, Groupon filed even more trademark applications.<p>There are a lot of decent, hard-working hackers at Groupon, and quite a few of them, I&#x27;m sure, regularly visit HN. They won&#x27;t be happy to find out about this.<p>Are there any Groupon insiders here willing to comment on this, maybe anonymously?<p>--<p>UPDATE: Groupon just released an official response: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8590343" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8590343</a> -- they now say they will be &quot;glad to look for another name.&quot; If they really mean it, kudos to them for changing their position!

Groupon takes the pole position for the amount of douchebagery they dished out within such a short period of their existence.

I don&#x27;t get it either. If GNOME (the desktop environment and the foundation) have a trademark on GNOME, why do they need $80k to defend it? Shouldn&#x27;t the trademark office then simply reject any further application for GNOME name related to computers, software and operating systems? Is this because of the idiotic defunc. justice system the US is imposing on themselves? Where you can sue mall owner for millions because you slipped on his floor? sigh

I&#x27;m one of the folks working on the GNOME defense campaign. Happy to answer any questions people might have.

I had thought Groupon&#x27;s core competence is scamming small businesses, not providing POS terminals for them? Do those two things go together?

Couldn&#x27;t someone like Google, Apple, or any of the other huge companies who have made billions with the help of *nix and OSS in general step in and help out with what, to them, is a trivial drop in the bucket of money?<p>Also how is it even legal for someone to so openly and malicious intrude on a trademarked name? I thought that&#x27;s the entire point of trademarks.. it protects you from this?

Official Groupon response: <a href="https://engineering.groupon.com/2014/misc/gnome-foundation-and-groupon-product-names/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;engineering.groupon.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;misc&#x2F;gnome-foundation-a...</a><p>&quot;There is some recent confusion around Groupon’s intended use of a product name that the Gnome Foundation believes infringes on their trademarks.<p>We love open source at Groupon. We have open sourced a number of projects on github. Our relationship with the open source community is more important to us than a product name. We’ve been communicating with the Gnome Foundation for months to try to come to a mutually satisfactory resolution, including alternative branding options, and we’re happy to continue those conversations. And if we can’t come up with a resolution, we’ll be glad to look for another name.<p>We will continue to have an open line of communication with the Gnome Foundation until this matter is resolved.&quot;

I feel bad that reason I&#x27;m donating for the first time to a project that has benefited me and so many others over the years is to help then fight a legal battle not to help support development.

I really don&#x27;t know what happened over there at Groupon: <a href="http://gnome.groupon.com/#intro/index" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;gnome.groupon.com&#x2F;#intro&#x2F;index</a><p>Did they truly not know? Did they just think the Gnome project wouldn&#x27;t care? That they&#x27;ll win the lawsuit?

One of the lead security people at Groupon has a big GNOME sticker on his laptop in a pic on LinkedIn. This tells me that groupon is about to get pooped on.

How is it possible for Groupon to not know about GNOME? they probably have so many development machines running GNONE in their offices..<p>I find it hard to believe that none of their tech team has never heard of gnome..<p>Infact they should be grateful for GNONE for it being a huge part of linux operating systems and they must have surely used it during the course of groupon&#x27;s existance

IANAL, but legal protection for trademarks extends to any usage wherein it would create sufficient consumer confusion.<p>Great example: Apple v. Apple. The computer company agreed to not enter the music industry. To the extent of which they got sued when they added a sound card and multimedia features to their computers. They settled for a boatload of money rather than let a judge decide that they couldn&#x27;t add any sound&#x2F;media features.<p>The bigger issue is that the GNOME foundation lawyers are attempting to deal with these competing registrations individually, rather than as a class, and trying to convince a judge that Groupon is acting in bad faith and attempting to use the legal system to force them to abandon the trademark in the face of excessive legal fees.

Shame on you Groupon. Allow me to suggest an alternate name for your PoS tablet: iPad

Donated.<p>I hope that Groupon finds its ability to attract and retain engineering talent substantially degraded.

In laymans terms, can someone explain why does it costs 80 grand to protect something you registered to be legally yours 8 years ago? If they registered the GNOME trademark in 2006, isn&#x27;t that supposed to <i>protect</i> them from this kind of shit instead of cost them more money when some big guy comes along and tries to take it?

I&#x27;ve created a snapshot of some of the related pages, in case they ever get taken down:<p>Original GNOME page: <a href="https://archive.today/glAva" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.today&#x2F;glAva</a><p>Groupon Gnome press release: <a href="https://archive.today/MQk7o" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.today&#x2F;MQk7o</a><p>USPTO page 1: <a href="https://archive.today/xWlTk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.today&#x2F;xWlTk</a><p>USPTO page 2: <a href="https://archive.today/FpeeU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.today&#x2F;FpeeU</a><p>USPTO page 3: <a href="https://archive.today/CpI0s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.today&#x2F;CpI0s</a><p>Groupon Gnome page: <a href="https://archive.today/yGhPF" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.today&#x2F;yGhPF</a>

Did I miss the announcement that Darl McBride was taking over as Groupon CEO?

Does Paypal still randomly freeze accounts when they get an influx of money?

If only there was some sort of blockchain technology that allowed us to declare ownership over things and used algorithms and cryptography instead of policies and lawyers...

How is this trademark infringement? Generally speaking, you&#x27;re allowed to use a trademarked word in a different field (and even trademark in that field yourself!).<p>The classic example is Dominos pizza vs. Domino sugar:<p><a href="http://www.wolverine-startuplaw.com/2014/03/06/analyzing-the-looming-trademark-disputes-over-facebooks-paper-part-3-of-3/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wolverine-startuplaw.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;03&#x2F;06&#x2F;analyzing-the...</a><p>Here, &quot;Gnome&quot; is being used in two &quot;technical&quot; contexts... but that&#x27;s a pretty broad brush to paint with for claiming overlap.

I love Gnome and use it daily but obviously it&#x27;s not a desktop environment and doesn&#x27;t copy Gnome. I don&#x27;t think real words like gnome (or windows) should be trademarks and surely not when two companies do two completely different things.<p>For sure, the gnome foundation doesn&#x27;t want to sue garden gnome manufacturers as well.

Groupon still exists? Wasn&#x27;t it on a death spiral a few years ago?

IMHO gnome should spent the money on the people who create and maintain the software, I don&#x27;t see how funneling resources into the legal system is in any way beneficial to open and free software.

Donated.

What&#x27;s the point on trademarking something when later you need to pay $80,000 to defend it? The US... smh

Donated few bucks. I encourage everyone to do more than me. Lads, this tiny bit of freedom is in your hands. Please do the proper thing.

Ehm.. so.. GNOME wants our help now. But how did they behave when GNOME 3 was announced to not work without systemd? Or hey, anyone remember that discussion on a GNOME developers&#x27; mailing list, where they planned to take out theming support, because &quot;it is going against the ubiquitous experience we envision GNOME 3 to be&quot;?<p>This smells fishy to me. (I said it more harshly, but realised that I went too far, sorry about that.)<p>Feel free to shoot holes in my theory.