[Juriwiki-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Trademark violation of our 'MediaWiki' mark

Tue Nov 1 01:30:52 UTC 2005

Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 10/31/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>By default that is standard practice. But I don't know if that was the
>>understanding between Brion and Jimmy. You'll need to ask them to make
>>that point clear.
>
> According to the US Code, a work made by an employee within the scope of his
> employment is *always* a work made for hire. The copyright may have been
> transfered (and that transfer can be terminated after 35 years), but AFAIK
> you can't change the authorship of a work.
>
> Of course, to further confuse things, WikiMedia may very well be a work of
> joint authorship, and in that case Brion is probably one of the joint
> authors along with the WMF.

1) I am not the sole author of MediaWiki, I'm just one of several people
who's worked on it.

2) My work on MediaWiki antedates my employment with Wikimedia, so
Wikimedia can make no claim on my prior contributions.

3) The verbal agreement Jimmy and I made was that I would continue to
retain copyright to software contributions I make during my employment.

4) As far as I know, the Foundation has no copyright interest in
MediaWiki. Some contributors have renounced their copyright interest, so
fragments here and there may be public domain. ;)

5) The Foundation may own the trademark on the name MediaWiki, which
postdates the creation of the software itself.

6) A trademark registration for the mark was filed last year on behalf
of the foundation, though it hasn't totally gone through yet. (I'm not
the person to ask for details on that.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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