[WikiEN-l] enforcing our trademark

Mon Jan 9 11:08:19 UTC 2006

It occurs to me we should enforce some of our trademarks, because rampant
infringement of Wikipedia's trademarks, and Wikimedia's trademarks in
general is occurring. If we don't enforce our trademarks IIRC, we will
eventually lose the ability to enforce them forever.

For example: WikipediaClassAction.org is violating our trademark and
copyright. Wikipedi.org, wikicommons.org, etc. are candidates for trademark
infringement. I am not a lawyer, but it occurs to me that we apparently
abhor being on the defending side of lawsuits so much, we abhor being the
plaintiff.

There are several reasons why we should do this soon (ie. issue takedown
notices for infringement for these sites):

1. It would establish our authoritative presence in the legal arena, while
being relatively easy cases.
2. It would show that we are determined to be accountable, ie. it would
dissuade possible malicious vandals, or make them think twice, while not
discouraging new users.
3. Following this logic, it shows that just because it is Wikipedia, it
doesn't mean we're weak or helpless, or can't eventually use the long arm of
the law to find those who try to sabotage the encyclopedia.
4. Imagine what the consequences could be if someone redirected a
typosquatting site targeting the Wikipedia audience - to a porn site.
5. The GFDL is being enforced in the same manner: it doesn't compromise our
"free as in freedom/information wants to be free" philosophy whatsoever.
6. There's a large chance this will help unite the community in external
action.

We would discourage new users only very minimally, and might give us some
controversy, but that's only because of the misconception that open source
=> weak and vulnerable.

On the other hand, people have raised up suggestions that we also have a
large case against Willy on Wheels and Wikipedia is Communism.

Of course, I do not seem to know why we don't do this already. Thoughts?