Quoting Miroslav Rovis (miro.ro...@croatiafidelis.hr): > > Quoting zap (calmst...@posteo.de): > > > > > > On 09/23/2017 10:35 PM, Rick Moen wrote: > ... > > If interested in this area of law, see: 'Trademark Law' on > > http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Licensing_and_Law/ > > > > (I was one of the editors of _Linux Gazette_ magazine when SSC, Inc., > > then publishers of _Linux Journal_, attempted to push us around using > > trademark-based threats. We called their bluff. We won.) > > Rick, I briefly looked up: > http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Licensing_and_Law/ > but there's no mention of that specific case of trademark-based threats. None > of the words to be found in all the links at iusmentis.com, justinsomnia.org > nor audioholics.com that you gave under those paragraph on that page which > contain the string "threat". No "journ" "Gaze" strings to be found in them.
It's covered in 'Trademark Law' on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Licensing_and_Law/ . (I hope you understand that the cited link is part of a hierarchical information index, my site knowledgebase.) Direct link to the indexed page is: http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/trademark-law.html I notice that domains iusmentis.com, justinsomnia.org, and audioholics.com crop up in _other_ articles on that index. Phil Hughes, CEO of SSC, Inc. and original publisher of _Linux Journal_, never went so far as to file trademark litigation. Perhaps he knew he was bluffing and did not actually own the monopoly rights he professed. He blustered and suggested impending litigation quite a bit, and wrote an e-mail to our domain registrar that claimed our domain linuxgazette.net infringed SSC's (alleged) trademark rights. He also spent US $330 on a US Federal trademark (service mark) registration retroactively on our magazine's name, which filing got dismissed because he screwed it up. We were preparing an opposition in the US Patent and Trademark Office matter, challenging Phil's claim to have used the mark in commerce as being knowingly false, when we heard that USPTO had denied his application (but kept his $330). Even if Phil had secured his trademark, and it survived our USPTO opposition filing, our magazine inherently would still not be in violation, for two separately compelling reasons: (1) _Linux Gazette_ was not a commercial magazine. (2) Also, upon commencement of threats from SSC, Inc., I immediately appended to all issues of our magazine a disclaimer footer saying 'Linux Gazette is not produced, sponsored, or endorsed by its prior host, SSC, Inc.' Both of these facts ensured that the magazine could not possibly infringe a (hypothetical) SSC trademark, because they addressed the essence of trademark infringement, which is the legal claim that a commercial competitor is wrongfully using your distinctive marks in commerce, in connection with competing goods or services, in a way likely to mislead your customers into thinking you produced or endorsed the competitor's goods or services. The point is that any third-party use that for any reason does _not_ create that potential confusion via competing commercial offerings is inherently non-infringing by definition. Last, I really utterly sunk the basis of Phil's claim of a commercial right when I had the idea of writing to _Linux Gazette_ founder Dr. John Fisk and asking him if he'd conveyed any commercial rights to SSC, Inc. when accepting SSC's offer of Web hosting many years before. He said absolutely not -- that his and SSC's clear understanding was that it was to remain a purely non-commercial magazine. I dropped that correspondence like a bombshell into the then-ongoing controversy over the _Linux Gazette_ matter at LWN.net, where a bunch of legally ignorant computerists were fervently advising us editors to capitualate immediately befored the big, horrible corporation crushed us for imagining that we had any right to publish a magazine. It shut most of them right up, even the ones claiming the other editors and I were foolish for thinking that an (alleged) trademark owner enjoyed less than absolute monopoly over a name. > And I got: > > > > > General Protection Fault--404 Error! > Nice joke! Why, thank you. I'll have to look up my httpd configuration as to why https isn't handled for knowledgebase index pages. I haven't given out https URLs for the knowledgebase's pages, in part because IMO it's pointless on completely public content lacking need for attestation. _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
