[Foundation-l] Wikipedia trademark being used incorrectly

Thu Nov 18 05:35:14 UTC 2004

--- Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:

> In an article on Slyck.com (
> http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=609 ), 
> the author improperly refers to infoAnarchy as a
> "Wikipedia". The 
> relevant excerpt reads:
> 
> > InfoAnarchy.org has been involved with the P2P
> community for a 
> > considerable amount of time - about the same as
> Zeropaid and Slyck. 
> > Like P2Pnet.net, InfoAnarchy.org contains an
> impressive amount of 
> > original content written by owner Erik Möller. One
> of its major 
> > accomplishments is an extensive Wikipedia 
> >
>
<http://www.infoanarchy.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page>
> containing a 
> > wealth of P2P and file-sharing information.
> Members of the site 
> > maintain the Wikipedia. All InfoAnarchy.org needs
> is more frequent 
> > news updates to make this a leading P2P news site.
> 
> I've already sent an email to Slyck in a public
> relations capacity, so 
> we don't need to flood them with more. However, I
> think it would be 
> helpful if Erik would also contact them, since he
> runs infoAnarchy, to 
> help make sure this kind of confusion doesn't get
> perpetuated. Because 
> Wikipedia is easily the largest and most
> recognizable wiki, we need to 
> be vigilant against people misusing the Wikipedia
> name if we intend to 
> protect our trademarks.
> 
> --Michael Snow

Is there any good reason why we don't place a trade
mark symbol (or registered trade mark, if appropriate)
next to the word "Wikipedia" at the top of each page?
Or somewhere? I know the symbol is not needed for the
word to be a trademark, but I think the symbol would
help reinforce to various parties that the word is
indeed a trademark.

Seems like a simple step. Can't see that it would
hurt.

-Rich Holton

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