Questions for legal about updating trademark guidelines

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Tue, Aug 09, 2011 at 05:04:09PM +0100, Peter Robinson wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 4:49 PM, Toshio Kuratomi <a.badger at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, Aug 05, 2011 at 08:45:48PM +0100, Peter Robinson wrote:
> >> I've thought about this a bit since the meeting and I was wondering whether a
> >> process similar to third parties wanting to use the Fedora name in their URL
> >> might be appropriate. Its obviously not exact the same but its a similar style
> >> of issue. Hosting organisations like amazon (I work for a hosting provider that
> >> does cloud stuff and we deal with this) have to do licensing processes for
> >> various other OSes so I wouldn't have thought it would be a major problem or
> >> change of process for them. Max might be able to comment on that though. We
> >> could put some simple guidelines in place that wouldn't have to be repeated for
> >> each release so they basically agree not to modify etc and it would protect and
> >> enforce the trademark. spot might be able to comment on the process and whether
> >> something similar might be an appropriate compromise between the spins process
> >> and nothing at all.
> >>
> > So I see these two things which may be what you're talking about:
> > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Local_community_domains#Pre-purchased_domain
> > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Trademark_guidelines#Noncommercial_and_community_web_sites
> >
> > The first link seems to boil down to the Board will use a rapid process to
> > verify that the trademark guidelines are being followed and then ask "Can
> > the community set up this domain?"  In most cases, it's expected the Board
> > will answer "Yes".
> >
> > The second link could be applied to third parties producing images although
> > it would need heavy adaptation.
> 
> I never meant that they were suppose to be used straight up but rather
> the principle/idea/procedures that is used for domains might apply
> equally well as a procedure for approving 3rd party use of core
> packages with modified images/config files etc. to ensure they meet
> and understand the requirements of using Fedora and its associated
> trademarks.
> 
Sure.  But what is the principle/idea/procedures that we're shooting for
here?  Be rapid in approval?  I can agree with that (although our community
domain approvals haven't always been speedy :-(.  Have a written set of
standards?  We've so far failed in that, but it would be a good goal.  Have
the list of criteria be short?  I could agree with that... what is the
principle that you're trying to encompass here?


> Might be interesting to see if Debian and other distros have policies
> regarding this.
> 
To my non-legal eyes, both Debian and the Linux trademark are much looser
than what we have:

http://www.debian.org/logos/
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/legal/trademark/sublicense-agreement

The Linux trademark licensing is operating on somewhat different goals than
we are, though.

-Toshio
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