[Foundation-l] Fair Use and Registered Trademarks

Tue Jul 12 20:54:30 UTC 2005

Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:

> Actually, I don't think you can digitize some public domain work and  
> change its title unless you also change its content.
>
> At least in France, that would be forbidden by the moral rights  
> legislation.
>
>
This is likely to be a huge, and perhaps incompatable difference, 
between American and French law.  Changing and modifying public domain 
works is commonly accepted, and often encouraged under many 
circumstances.  That appears to be precisely what has happened here with 
the Gutenberg Encyclopedia.

 From what I see, based on some research I've just done searching 
various web pages and trying to read court opinons, etc. (IANAL) the use 
of a trademark is reserved for the company who holds it.  In this case 
we (or at least I am) trying to advertise the project and discuss the 
project in public forums.  In this situation, I am not legally entitled 
to describe the project as "Wikisource Encyclopaedia Britianica, 11th 
Edition", because that implies endorsement from Encyclopaedia 
Britianica, Inc.  This puts the Wikimedia Foundation into a real legal 
bind if that trademark is used widely, for example as a hyperlink from 
Wikipedia articles to Wikisource, or even discussed outside of Wikimedia 
projects.

For what is happening right now, the full name is being used, and I 
guess for now we will use it and hope the lawyers won't come knocking on 
Jimbo's front door anytime soon, unless I hear a contrary opinion from 
anybody.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning