[SGVLUG] trademark realities

[Dustin]

On Mon, 29 Aug 2005, Hershel Remer wrote:

> > I don't know when and where you went to school, Hershel, but these days we
> > call zero a number. :-)
> 
> 
> So are the odds a bazillion to 1? A terrabazillion to 1? A nanobazillion to 1?
> 
> We're talking about setting odds, and I don't know how on earth you're going
> to do that, Dustin.

No.  Even if we could not obtain the actual value, that would not imply
"unquantifiable", but rather merely "unquantified."  You effectively
asserted that no value exists by saying they were "unquantifiable," and
then proceeded to quantify them by saying they were zero.

Words mean what they mean, particularly words about numbers. :-)

> > Didn't I say that?
> 
> I don't know, but didn't you waste bandwidth trying to determine odds of being
> hit by lightning on the way to a LUG meeting?  ;-)

As a physicist, I have the moral right to make order-of-magnitude 
estimates on even the slimmest of data.  Our union negotiated that back 
sometime before Archimedes' time. :-)

I'll worry about a tiny amount of wasted bandwidth when HTML and XML are
replaced with reasonable formats and people forbid mailing lists to
automatically add half a dozen lines of disclaimers and list management
information to every single message. :-)

> > I believe we've already been given it, effectively.
> 
> Interesting. I must've missed that in the discussion, so please refresh my
> memory as to the details of how we were given permission. Because if we were
> given permission, then I don't understand why we're even having this
> discussion to begin with.

Read the links I posted.  If you pay attention, they seem to say that the
LMI wants to be paid if you have a trademark of your own incorporating
Linux in some way.  SGVLUG is not a trademark, thus we are of no interest
to LMI.  That's permission enough.  Further, Linus has specifically said
that the purpose of LMI is to continue community use of "Linux" as best as
can be done under existing trademark law (which seems to actually forbid
the simple community usage we'd all prefer, trademark law was written for
the benefit of the rich only).  There is no way in the world they want to
bother LUGs, which are "community" if anything is, so I count that as
permission from Linus, the actual trademark holder.  Finally, as best as I
understand our somewhat ridiculous laws, trademarked terms can be used
descriptively under something like a "fair use" doctrine (but surely there
is some special legal term for it I don't know), and the "L" in SGVLUG is
purely descriptive.  (We are a group of users of Linux, the trademarked
operating system kernel, and we meet in the San Gabriel Valley.)  That is
effectively permission from the US Government, or if I want try to speak
more exactly Congress declines to extend the monopoly of a trademark
holder to all uses of a trademarked term, thus your natural right to use
any term for any purpose has not been tampered with.  Any of those three
are sufficient.

I repeat that crediting Linus as the holder of the trademark "Linux" seems
to me to be primarily "the right thing to do," not a legal necessity.  A
fun (?) project for someone--roughly how many LUG websites credit Linus?  
I've seen sites (I don't recall if any were LUG sites) that do but don't
have any idea of the proportion.

If you have any doubts about this, tell me--do you have written permission
from The Open Group for first "U" in UUASC?  If not, when will you be
writing to them to ask for permission?  "Unix" is a trademark and The Open
Group is *FAR* more nasty about its usage than LMI ever could be--you have
to pay to use it for any use.  In fact,

http://www.unix.org/trademark.html

suggests that the UUASC usage is not legal--"It must not be used as a
generic term."  Since UUASC includes BSD (not licenced to use the
tradmark) and Linux (not licenced and also not decended from the AT&T
codebase), it sounds generic to me.

So, is UUASC paying?  I'm sure the answer is no, and even if it were yes I
don't see any attribution on the site as The Open Group would no doubt
demand.  I imagine that's because UUASC needn't pay under my third point
above--the usage is descriptive, and UUASC isn't a trademark, so The Open
Group would have no case.  Failing that, there is the practical fact that
has been pointed out, that it wouldn't pay to sue either SGVLUG or UUASC.  
That is actually the least reassuring reason, since we are talking
trademark and not patent or copyright.  As I understand it in the latter
two cases the monopoly holder can ignore infringement without risking the
loss of the monopoly.  In the case of trademark this is not true, so it
seems that sometimes it must pay to sue a penniless infringer simply to
make sure that the trademark is not lost, making other, deeper pockets
continue to pay.  However, I've never heard of a user group getting sued
by The Open Group, so in practice this must be sufficient.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that UUASC worry about this issue, only
pointing out that it's right to use its name is less certain than that of
SGVLUG.  If you, as God-Emperor of UUASC (or something like that :-)  
aren't taking steps to correct its situation, then it is difficult to
understand why you would suggest we bother to write LMI.

My preference would be for UUASC to do exactly as it has always done--I
think it's legal, and if not it is The Open Group's responsibility to
enforce the mark and I don't much care to give them free legal help (I
would actually prefer they had to ask permission of the BSD projects to
use the term).  I only suggested SGVLUG credit Linus to strengthen LMI's
position, and given that we have had attempts in at least three countries
to steal it from the community I think that's the best legal option we
have.

Dustin