[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia Trademark and Logo Policies

Thu Mar 2 15:24:11 UTC 2006

On Tuesday 28 February 2006 18:11, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> A link?? You need the full text of the GFDL on the iPod. Also - 
> I sent you an offlist question 
> about the use of the Wikipedia trademark and logo. Again - 
> did you get permission to do that? 

I have been following this discussion to some extent, and have often 
wondered about the Wikipedia policies but never really looked into it 
substantively. However, this thread inspired me -- or rather disappointed 
me -- and so I looked around a bit and thought I would make a couple, 
hopefully productive, comments.

At the W3C, I worked with our counsel to develop the various copyright and 
trademark policies for the W3C. There, like here, we wanted our content -- 
specifications -- to be as widely as accessible as possible but also 
preserve the integrity of the specification. The challenges then, from the 
point of trademark were to:
1. Follow practices that would permit us to apply for and keep our marks. 
One of the great difficulties here was getting W3C staff to use the the 
marks descriptively (an adjective). Sun is great at this with their Java, 
if you look at the page, Java what is never used as a noun:
  http://java.sun.com/
Wikipedia is commonly used as a noun, and I'm surprised that did not cause 
any problems in the registration, and wonder if the will calls problems in 
the future.

2. Permit others to use those terms in a way that did not seem heavy-handed, 
but did not weaken the mark. One of the innovations there, I think, was the 
trademark license:
  http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/trademark-license-20021231
In it, others can use the trademark but only if they identify the owner, 
described the W3C "product", and accurately disclose its status. Otherwise, 
"4. Marks may not be used to indicate any kind of endorsement by the W3C, 
official status with respect to the W3C, or any kind of relationship with 
the W3C aside from a representation that the above requirements (1-3) have 
been met."

Wikipedia is noted as a registered trademark at the bottom of every page, 
but it is not easy to discern where the trademark is registered, whether 
common law trademark claims or otherwise made, and what policies govern its 
usage -- even to say "send an e-mail here."

I will also point out the logo policies :
  http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/logo-usage-20000308

So, for Wikipedia's sake, it would probably be useful to have a link any 
legal footer to a basic policy and how to request exceptions to it.