Could you kindly explain me then what's the point of registering a trademark? Is it something you can then wave with in front of jury? Do you really need $80k for that? Do you need $80k to print out your accepted trademark application, and prove that you're in the business for 17 years? Sorry this is just complete non-sense and failure of the system.
Not only that, but those $80k could have paid for quite a few months of development, but instead those will be money going down the drain because of a broken justice system. And they have the nerve to say that IP laws are fueling innovation.
Without IP GNOME would not care. GNOME users would know not to associate Groupon with GNOME, and without IP you could call all your stuff anything you want, and that does not mean anything to anyone else, unless you manipulate people into seeing the wrong brand in the wrong place. IE, deception.
Your misunderstanding highlights why we need to demolish the term "Intellectual Property".
Patents and Copyright stifle innovation and should be reformed or abolished. Trademark is essential consumer protection against fraud and manipulation and is extremely important to keep, although it needs to be fixed not to require prohibitive costs to defend one's trademark.
There was no misunderstanding. Trademarks, as you yourself have said, are also an exploitative tool of abuse by entrenched interests. Impersonation and slander should still be illegal, but the claiming of ownership of a name is only rife for abuse. I'm against IP in general.
Copyright, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights, trade dress, trade secrets are all lumped together under the intellectual property term. Yes, you can argue that the term itself is incorrect as property is used here in a way that contradicts the law itself, also lumping together different laws under the same umbrella, preventing rational discussions about specifics, but there you have it.
I didn't see any comments that applied to patents (e.g., that they cover inventions, that they require the inventor to disclose all relevant details of the invention, that they have definite lifetimes, etc.), so while I agree with you and Stallman that it's important to be explicit about when you're talking about copyright, trade secrets, patents and trademarks, I don't think anybody's created any confusion yet.
Besides, for amusement's sake, the USPTO stands for "United States Patent and Trademark Office."
> I didn't see any comments that applied to patents
Well, when someone mentioned "fuel innovation", I assume they did not talk about trademarks, because trademarks have NOTHING to do with protecting innovation. That's what patents are for (in theory, while I don't agree with that, but that's a different topic).
'Intellectual Property' is not a legal classification, and shouldn't be. Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, and looser-defined 'trade secrets' all have distinct purposes. Saying "Intellectual Property" when you mean "Trademark" gives the impression that the holder has all kinds of legal protections which don't actually apply.
Over the long term, there's danger that legal theories will change to further expand the rights of corporate publishers.
> 'Intellectual Property' is not a legal classification, and shouldn't be.
Intellectual Property isn't a classification defined in law, but it is an analytic classification used in law, the same way that various other subcategories of "property" are, to discuss related protections.
∀X : X ∈ { Copyright, Trademark, Patent, ... }, X ⊂ Intellectual Property ⊂ Intangible Personal Property ⊂ Personal Property ⊂ Property.
Those are not true subsets like you suggest. Consider that moral rights, which fall under intellectual property law, don't fit into the "property" category. For example, the "right [of the author] to prevent the destruction of a work of art if it is of 'recognized stature'" is not something which is true of anything I know of outside of creative works.
In German law, the inventor of a patent has the right to a share of the profit even if developed as an employee of the company making the profit; again, something not shared with tangible property.
I think of the relationship between "intellectual property" and "property" is more akin to "Pluto is a dwarf planet, but it's not a planet."
> Consider that moral rights, which fall under intellectual property law, don't fit into the "property" category.
Moral rights absolutely fall under the property category.
> For example, the "right [of the author] to prevent the destruction of a work of art if it is of 'recognized stature'" is not something which is true of anything I know of outside of creative works.
Well, yes, the fact that element x is an element of set A and set A is a subset of set B, and set C is a subset of set B does not imply that x is an element of set C.
The whole point of named subsets of property (and, named subsets as analytic categories in general) is that the names come from features that are shared within the named subset that are distinct from other subsets in the broader set. So, yes, Copyright has features that are dissimilar to Patent or Trademark, IP generally has features that are dissimilar to other intangible personal property, intangible personal property has features that are dissimilar to tangible personal property, and personal property generally has features that are dissimilar to real property.
You are right. My examples were not valid counter examples.
I think of a property right as something which is transferable. The two examples I gave were of rights that were not transferable. However, if "Personal Property" also includes non-transferable rights, then there's no conflict.
As a clear counter-counter-example of why my counter-example is wrong, tenancy rights are part of real property law, and may or may not include succession rights.
My comment then transforms to the (trivial) observation that intellectual property ⊄ real property.
> Could you kindly explain me then what's the point of registering a trademark?
---
* Public notice of your claim of ownership of the mark;
* A legal presumption of your ownership of the mark and your exclusive right to use the mark nationwide on or in connection with the goods/services listed in the registration;
* The ability to bring an action concerning the mark in federal court;
* The use of the U.S. registration as a basis to obtain registration in foreign countries;
* The ability to record the U.S. registration with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Service to prevent importation of infringing foreign goods;
* The right to use the federal registration symbol ®; and
Listing in the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s online databases.
The system is a mess. I have a small side project and I trademarked the name, yet a competitor of mine used my trademark to promote their site and after speaking with several people about my situation they made it clear that unless I was willing to put up about six figures to fight it there isn't much I could do.
None of those people you spoke to sound like lawyers. It won't cost six figures to have a lawyer send a letter. Your competitor might not like the six figures prospect of defending themselves.
Actually they were business people who have been through this battle before spending in the six figures to defend their marks (along with my brother who is a patent attorney). But yes, you are correct that sending a letter is the first step but if that step is ignored then the next step will cost money...and too much money for a single developers side project!
This is really disappointing and could be use to harass a company, what stops a malicious group of people do a "copyright ddos" by just forcing a company to pay 80k each time they need to defend it's trademarks?
No, you need that 80k to argue that Groupon's proposed product would infringe your trademark.
US trademarks are only good for the line of business I'm in. If I were to publish a software product called Mustang, for example, Ford wouldn't be able to sue me for copyright infringement. My product shares a trademark with one of theirs, but it's in a different enough market that the two trademarks don't conflict with each other.
It sounds like Groupon's proposed product is point of sale hardware. That's different enough from a desktop window manager that Groupon can quite possibly get a lawyer to convince a jury that they're different businesses. Therefore GNOME Foundation has to pay a lawyer to stand up and argue the other side of the case.
I'm not going to Google it for you. But they could settle the case, e.g. Groupon could agree not to use the name after it becomes clear that Gnome has spent enough to assemble a legal defense. And Gnome decides that the cost of pursuing further action makes it too risky.
