[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >The company in question is willing to negotiate terms for a trademark >license that is agreeable to all parties.
>Obviously any advertising or >guarantee restrictions are unacceptable to us. Well, no; some such restrictions are acceptable. We accept the required "NO WARRANTY" clauses in lots of licenses. I think that a restriction which required that we note that *they* aren't guaranteeing it would be fine. >Unlimited use of the trademark is unacceptable to them. Well, first of all we don't want or need that. We can use the trademark in most of the ways we want to without hitting any trademark restrictions. I don't have the case reference here, but there was a case involving TSR and products labelled "Compatible with Dungeons and Dragons", and it was ruled that that was *not* a trademark violation (although TSR kept threatening people who did it with lawsuits for years anyway). Basically, we can't legally use a trademark (without a license) in ways which may cause confusion about the origin of the product; we can use it in all other ways and be on safe legal ground under current law. Putting the trademark in the name of the driver might lead people to think that the driver was from the company which owns the trademark, so that would require a license. How about this license: Anyone may use the trademark <trademark> as part of the name of a product designed to work with <the hardware>; provided that the product using the trademark in its name, and any advertising for it using the trademark, prominently mentions that the product is not produced by or supported by the makers of <the hardware>. Using the trademark in the name is the only thing we want which would actually hit trademark restrictions as far as I can tell, so that's all we need a license for. Disclaimers are required by a lot of licenses and should be acceptable (much like NO WARRANTY requirements). With this license, the disclaimers are the only restriction, and this restriction applies solely to usage of trademarks in an otherwise-maybe-infringing manner, not to anything else. Among other things, I believe this keeps it GPL-compatible, since the product can be distributed without agreeing to the restrictions simply by changing the name (which is not part of the copyright-covered material). >They want their trademarks stripped from modified >code that is essentially different in intent and purpose from the >original code. Well, that's fine; we don't want to use their trademarks for things which aren't designed to work with their hardware, now do we? (At least, except in a historical context, which certainly wouldn't be a trademark violation.) So what do you think they would say about the model trademark license I just proposed? (Don't use it until debian-legal has had a few days to nitpick it, of course.) I think it's a free license, although others may disagree; the key point is that it is not trying to do anything but prevent confusion, and it doesn't overreach. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
