[Commons-l] Re: Trademarks

Wed Sep 14 20:26:00 UTC 2005

Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> schrieb/wrote:
> The core goal of Commons is maximal reuse.

Maximal reuse might result in minial content.

I think every restriction should be evaluated to determine whether the
image is still "free enough".

With copyright, that's quite easy: Copyright restricts nearly every act
of redistribution, so it makes sense to require that images and other
media need to have a "free license".[1]

On the other hand, trademarks only restricts labelling products with the
image or impersonating the owner, i.e. "trademarkish" use. IMO(!),
that's still "free enough".

Further, there's a conflict if you include "trademarkish" use within the
maximal reuse goal of Wikimedia: If someone really starts to use an
image on Commons as a trademark, it's likely to become protected as a
trademark (and incompatible with the maximal reuse goal).

Finally, there are some practical problems with a strict no-trademark
policy. As everything can be trademarked, you would have to do regular
trademark searches with every trademark registry. You can't ask the
author/source of an image (especially if it's PD or depicts something
found in nature) and there are very few things that can't be trademarked
(and virtually none the upload of which to Commons makes sense).

> Commercial logos are frequently under _both_ trademark _and_
> copyright.

If it's also copyrighted (and not under a free license), the situation
is clear: Wikimedia Commons can't host it.

-------------------------------
[1] You can argue what constitudes a "free" license. Some people
    consider no modification licenses free enough, some consider
    copyleft/share-alike/GNU licenses too restrictive.

Claus
-- 
http://www.faerber.muc.de