Help the GNOME Foundation defend the GNOME trademark!
“"GNOME" the trademark has been a familiar name for the past 17 years in the Free and Open Source Software community. [...]
Recently Groupon announced a product with the same product name as GNOME. Groupon’s product is a tablet based point of sale “operating system for merchants to run their entire operation." The GNOME community was shocked that Groupon would use our mark for a product so closely related to the GNOME desktop and technology. It was almost inconceivable to us that Groupon, with over $2.5 billion in annual revenue, a full legal team and a huge engineering staff would not have heard of the GNOME project, found our trademark registration using a casual search, or even found our website, but we nevertheless got in touch with them and asked them to pick another name. Not only did Groupon refuse, but it has now filed even more trademark applications (the full list of applications they filed can be found here, here and here). To use the GNOME name for a proprietary software product that is antithetical to the fundamental ideas of the GNOME community, the free software community and the GNU project is outrageous. Please help us fight this huge company as they try to trade on our goodwill and hard earned reputation.”
https://www.gnome.org/news/2014/11/gnome-starts-campaign-to-protect-its-trademarks/
yumeng, Douglas Perkins, Matt Molyneaux, uıɐɾ ʞ ʇɐɯɐs and 2 others likes this.
yumeng, giammi@identi.ca, Douglas Perkins, Matt Molyneaux and 14 others shared this.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was a maneuver by Groupon to get some free publicity:
They take the name of a popular Free Software project, know that many people will defend it and talk about this to a lot of other people, sharing this kind of thing to infinity.
Later they say it was a "misunderstanding" and withdraw, looking innocent.
Profit! Groupon is a lot more known now ¬¬
JanKusanagi @identi.ca at 2014-11-11T13:02:26Z
Evan Prodromou likes this.
I've donated.
>> lnxwalt@microca.st:
“If people start contacting Groupon's advertisers to tell them they are supporting trademark infringement, Groupon might decide that it does not like the name after all.”
As a collateral strategy to the USPTO defenses, that would likely reap dividends...
>> Luke:
“I've donated.”
I'm not a fan of GNOME, but I also donated. This is a fight that should concern all FLOSS supporters.