RE: [VisCom] FW: OSGeo trademarks, guidelines & attribution

Yes, trademark registration costs money. I'm trying to find out how much
and will report back when I hear.
  
Our legal rep has recommended that we trademark "OSGeo" and/or "Open
Source Geospatial Foundation".

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Arnulf Christl [mailto:arnulf.christl@ccgis.de]
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 2:41 AM
To: dev@visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org
Cc: Aaron Koning
Subject: Re: [VisCom] FW: OSGeo trademarks, guidelines & attribution

Peter Moran wrote:

Guys,

Below is discussion and attached are guidelines from our legal counsel

regarding protecting the OSGeo name and logo.

Regarding 2) below, I checked with Aaron (the logo creator) and he
created the compass from scratch, which was good to hear. (Nice work

Aaron!)

Proposed Action:
Daniel to add "Open Source Geospatial Foundation, OSGeo, and the OSGeo

logo are trademarks of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation in the
United States and/or other countries worldwide." after the copyright
notice on the bottom of the home page.

Proposed Action Once Logo Tagline is Finalized:
Daniel creates a Logo and Usage page that hosts the logo as pdf, .ai,
and .eps downloads, with the text in the attached Trademark Guidelines

making up the body text of the page.

Peter

Hi Peter, All,
I guess that copyrighting something costs money? If yes, from what
budget is OSGeo going to pay that?

Arnulf.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

*From:* Jennifer Daehler
*Sent:* Wednesday, May 24, 2006 12:16 PM
*To:* Peter Moran; Rich Steele (richsteele@osgeo.org)
*Cc:* Steele, Rich
*Subject:* OSGeo trademarks, guidelines & attribution

Hi Peter and Rich,

Sorry this is a long email. I want to catch you up on several
trademark-related things for OSGeo.

1. I am considering the following to be OSGeo trademarks:

"Open Source Geospatial Foundation"

"OSGeo"

the OSGeo logo (see attached .pdf that you sent me yesterday Peter)

and, any other tagline that OSGeo might select (if they do)

What about any trademarks/logos that individual projects might select
for themselves? This isn't really clear to me. Do you have a sense

of

what the intent is here? (For example MapGuide Open Source).

Hi,
we have requested this as a pending problem several weeks ago but it got

lost because other more pressing issues. Maybe this can serve as an
example for a project's individual logo.

The Mapbender Project has a mascot but we don't dare use it because we
do not know whether we run into trouble. The logo and tagline can be
found here:
http://www.mapbender.org/presentations/mapbender_homepage_logo.png

Bender is a figure from Futurama. This Bender is not a copy of the
original but has been created from a modcaser's hompage and we have
written consent from him that we may use it and do whatever we want.
Problem is that it highly resembles the original figure from the TV
series and this is why we don't use it anymore. Any ideas how to
proceed?

2. Due Diligence:

- I asked Christine to do some basic trademark searches for "Open

Source

Geospatial Foundation" and "OSGeo" to make sure that we weren't

treading

on anybody. These came up clean based on a USPTO search and a google
search.

- it is difficult to do logo searches (either informally or by paying
outside counsel a lot of money). As a result, I don't recommend

trying

to do a logo search. Part of the logo is our names (and those are

clean

as mentioned above). The other part of the logo is a compass. This
seems like a fairly generic compass, though I don't know if the person

who proposed it would have copied it from somewhere else. I think the

best diligence on that might be to simply ask the person how they
devised the compass. If they copied it from somebody else's logo,

that

would be a problem (trademark and potentially copyright). If they
copied it from somewhere else (and it wasn't part of someone else's
logo), then there might be a question of copyright infringement,

though

there are certainly generic aspects to compasses that might not even

be

copyrightable.

3. Trademark Guidelines:

- I've drafted the attached proposed trademark guidelines. These are
really simple/common guidelines - see some comments I've inserted in
them. If they seem appropriate, I would recommend that they be added

to

OSGeo.org. I'd probably create a link to them on the home page, right

next to the links for "Terms of Service" and "Privacy Policy".

4. Trademark Attribution on OSGeo.org:

- I would also recommend adding the following: "Open Source Geospatial

Foundation, OSGeo, and the OSGeo logo are trademarks of the Open

Source

Geospatial Foundation in the United States and/or other countries
worldwide."

This should be added as a next sentence after our copyright notice on
the bottom of the home page.

5. Trademark Attribution to be used by others:

- See my proposed guidelines, under "Proper Attribution". We want
others to attribute the OSGeo marks that they use to OSGeo - they'll

use

a derivative of "Open Source Geospatial Foundation, OSGeo, and the

OSGeo

logo are trademarks of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation in the
United States and/or other countries worldwide.", citing only the

marks

that they actually use.

Let me know your thoughts.

- Jennifer

* ** *

*Jennifer Daehler*
Intellectual Property Counsel

Autodesk, Inc.
111 McInnis Parkway

San Rafael, California 94903

Direct 415 507-6553
Fax 415 507-6126

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