RE: Trademark question.

[Lawrence Rosen <lr...@rosenlaw.com>]

Niclas Hedhman asked:
> I hope you can provide a quick free advice on a separate Open Source
> project; http://www.qi4j.org
> 
> The founders, i.e. me and Rickard Oberg, of the Qi4j project want the
> 'trademark' to be as free as the source code is (Apache licensed). Do
> we need to do something to prevent others from protecting Qi4j from
> free usage? Would it make sense to register it and then publish that
> anyone can use the name any way they want (except trying to stop
> others from doing the same)?


[I moved this back to legal-discuss@ and prc@ since I don't give free advice
to individuals here; you can all have it, worth whatever you paid for it! 
/Larry]


That's an easy one: Even if you're first to use the mark, if you don't (or
can't) claim a trademark for software, there's no trademark. It remains a
free word for anyone to apply to their software, and nobody can stop anyone
else. 

It is like the word "aspirin" in the U.S. applied to pharmaceuticals. Free
as a bird. Freer even than open source software.


Copyrights subsist automatically and must be licensed -- limited term.

Patents must be claimed and actually asserted -- limited term.

Trademarks must be claimed and always defended -- perpetual until lost.




> -----Original Message-----
> From: hedhman@gmail.com [mailto:hedhman@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Niclas
> Hedhman
> Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2009 10:50 PM
> To: Lawrence Rosen
> Subject: Trademark question.
<snip>


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