[Foundation-l] Registering Wikimedia trademarks

Wed Apr 28 05:35:12 UTC 2004

On wikipedia-l, Ed Poor raised the question of PhatNav (one of the many 
sites that copy us) calling itself "a Wikipedia". As Jimbo indicated, 
this is something we need to guard against, otherwise we risk losing 
trademark protection for the Wikipedia name.

This brings up again the issue of whether we should start registering 
trademarks belonging to the Wikimedia Foundation. Without necessarily 
resorting to threats of legal action, I think it would be far more 
effective if we can tell people "Wikipedia is a registered trademark of 
the Wikimedia Foundation" instead of just "Please do not use the name 
Wikipedia on your website as if it was the name of your encyclopedia". 
Trademark registration is something people will recognize and respect. 
They will generally respond more quickly, and they will be more likely 
to comply, even if the person notifying them is not in an "official" 
capacity.

The filing fee for a trademark application is US $335 (I'm assuming we 
would start by registering in the US). We should at least consider 
registering trademarks for Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, 
Wikisource, and Wikibooks. Granted, with our current financial resources 
it may not be practical to try and register all of our trademarks in 
every country we reach. But US registration is an important start, and 
would facilitate international registrations later. Given the exposure 
we're getting, I think registering Wikipedia as a trademark is 
particularly critical.

--Michael Snow