[Foundation-l] Re: Wikipedia trademark registration in Germany

Tue Jul 13 04:39:12 UTC 2004

Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

>Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> Well, nothing in the classes of goods covered by this trademark 
>> application should keep us from being able to register our own 
>> trademark. So this seems to be more a minor nuisance, rather than a 
>> fraudulent registration we would *need* to get overturned promptly.
>
>I agree. To register the trademark for our own "business" (online & 
>print publications, CD-editions) is much more urgent. If someone catches 
>these fields before us, we _really_ have a problem.
>
Is anybody monitoring this, in case somebody does try to register one of 
our trademarks? I'm only familiar with the US Patent & Trademark Office, 
which allows you to search online for pending and registered marks. I 
haven't tried to check for competing registrations in other countries.

Wacht irgendjemand darauf, falls jemand zukünftig versucht, noch eine 
von unseren Marken einzutragen?

>> It still would have been nice to make a timely objection, but at 
>> least this Jörg Nagel isn't blatantly infringing our trademark. It 
>> does make it difficult if we want to distribute Wikipedia-related 
>> merchandise in Germany, though.
>
>A colleague of mine who is a lawyer told me that even this would not
>necessarily constitute a problem. We would not be allowed to found a
>T-Shirt company "Wikipedia sports wear", but in his opinion (why do
>lawyers always have "opinions")
>
In my opinion, it's because when lawyers explain the law to people, they 
often keep in mind that in spite of their professional training, lawyers 
do not get to decide what the law *is*. Definitive interpretation 
generally belongs to the courts. So this formulation is common in the 
profession due to a variety of motivations (trying to be precise, not 
wanting to be proved wrong, avoiding liability for malpractice, etc.). 
But this is all just my opinion.

>this trade mark doesn't prevent us from producing t-shirts and other merchandise with the wikipedia logo and
>name on it.
>
Maybe or  maybe not, depending on the details of German trademark law, 
so I'll defer to people with more expertise on that. But even if this 
was ultimately legal to do, I have to assume the similarity to Nagel's 
trademark would make it more difficult for us if he raised objections.

>> I'd be a little surprised if he intends to start a Wikipedia brand of
>> clothing on his own. Was this application triggered by some of our
>> German publicity, I wonder? Just some random thoughts.
>
>Seems so - the application was just one week after the big media echo.
>
Genau das hatte ich bemerkt.

--Michael Schnee
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