[Foundation-l] Trademark violation

Tue Dec 13 02:31:21 UTC 2005

Dori wrote:

>On 12/12/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>Dori wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Is this a trademark violation? http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org/
>>>      
>>>
>>I doubt it.  He is not pretending to be Wikipedia, and I suppose his
>>usage is relevant to what he is trying to do.  None of the ads for other
>>class actions use the logo.  As long as he limits himself to that narrow
>>use it may be better to follow a policy of "Don't feed the trolls."
>>
>>Ec
>>    
>>
>I won't post anymore here since people are discussing it at juriwiki,
>but the site does say "(c) 2005 WikipediaClassAction.org — All rights
>reserved." and they mention nothing about Wikipedia being a redistered
>mark of another entity. At the very least having the image there is a
>copyright violation. Anyway I'm not a lawyer so I'll shut up.
>
He would probably have a fair use claim.

Copyright notice is not an essential element to owning a copyright, so 
any such notice is in itself meaningless.  Furthermore, a domain name is 
not a person, and has no legal standing of its own; it can't own anything.

Ec