The current Trademark License Agreement is unacceptable

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Christoph
Wickert<christoph.wickert at googlemail.com> wrote:
> The problem is: Who can afford a lawyer? This is American trade mark
> law, so you not only need a common lawyer but an expert for intellectual
> property rights. Is Red Hat really expecting their community members to
> pay for a lawyer if they want to contribute? That would be ridiculous.

More ridiculous than the level of mistrust over the stated intention
to protect the trademarks against potential misuse?

Let me put it this way. Would you prefer that the Fedora brand be
unprotected by trademarks so that anyone could use them for any
purpose whatsoever even if they were deliberately attempting to cause
confusion in the market?

Either you believe the Fedora brand is worthy of protection or you do
not. I happen to think its worthy of protection against malicious use.
I don't want a Microsoft or Apple shill being able to put up
misinformation sites that use the Fedora trademarks. In order to
prevent that, trademark law must be invoked and all trademark usage
must be sanctioned.

I also do not believe that you can satisfactorily write down a
succinct  definition of all possible misuse that a licensee may engage
in that would cause confusion in the market.
What is bad faith use of the mark? Noone will agree on a bright line
boundary. The language has to be loose in order to protect the marks
against all potential misuse. The language is not there as a trap to
spring on people acting in good faith. If that's how you feel then
there's already a HUGE gap in trust which I don't see how can be
filled in.

If you don't trust Red Hat as the mark holder to do the right thing
and to only exercise the legal power to terminate a license when a
license holder is misusing the mark..then I'm not sure what to tell
you as I don't think a satisfactory compromise could be reached that
did not require scrutiny by legal representation for all
parties..something you don't want to do. If you don't trust Red Hat to
do the right thing..you'll be contacting a lawyer if there was ever a
dispute.. so I don't understand the reluctance now.

-jef"Would you feel any better if Red Hat signed over the marks to me
personally?"spaleta