[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia Class Action

Tue Dec 13 15:03:10 UTC 2005

On 12/13/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 12/13/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "Anthony DiPierro" <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote
> > in message
> > news:71cd4dd90512121025r42088e35m38bd4a9e3b045629 at mail.gmail.com...
> > > > http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org/
> > > It'll be interesting to see if someone tries to force them to remove
> > > the trademarked Wikipedia logo from that site.
> >
> > According to the footer on that page:
> > "Wikipedia image, in its distorted format (c) Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is
> > used pursuant the fair use doctrine"
> >
> > IANAL but that sounds pretty demented to me :-)
> > --
> > Phil
> > [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
>
> Well, yeah, in my opinion it's a pretty obvious case of fair use as
> far as the copyright goes.  Doesn't Wikipedia have a tag for "logo of
> a company on a page about the company".  The case for dilution is
> trickier, but still probably fair use (if it's even dilution in the
> first place).  I think it'd be a horrible mistake to sue them over it,
> but hey, it'd be an interesting thing to watch.
>
> Anthony
>
Looking further, apparently the legal doctrine is "trademark
disparagement".  I don't know much about trademark law, so I'm going
to withdraw my statement about whether or not this use is fair use wrt
trademark/dilution law.

Anthony