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Firefox Faces Trademark Issues

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thu Jun 16, 2005 11:51 PM
from the all-in-a-name dept.
Mozilla The Internet Debian
daria42 writes "The Debian development community is currently hotly debating whether the Mozilla Foundation's strict trademarks policy violates Debian's social contract. However, in a twist, it appears Mozilla has not received approval for the Firefox trademarks yet, and the Firefox name may already be taken in the UK and Germany. The foundation has not applied for the Thunderbird trademark anywhere yet."
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  • So I wonder what new name they'll pick now...

  • Why? (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by turtled (845180)
    Why does something open source / free have to always be about money? I have never heard the term Firefox before the Firefox browser (not saying something of Firefox didn't exist).

    Also, why does it take over a year or so to come about?

    • Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jeff DeMaagd (2015)
      Given the issues over the naming, I am surprised that they aren't more thoughrough with their checks.

      • Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)

        by starwed (735423) on Friday June 17 2005, @04:36AM (#12839828)

        What you shouldn't be surprised about anymore is alarmist stories in the media.

        In fact, they were pretty thorough. When mozilla.org announced the name change, the trademark holder in the UK was mentioned; also mentioned was the deal negotiated with that trademark holder. Oddly enough, the article doesn't contain that last bit of information. Not inflammatory enough, I guess. ^_^

        Gervase Markham has a response [mozillazine.org] up on his blog that should probably be read if you find this story interesting.

    • It's not about that. It's about placing restrictions on distributing modifications. With a trademark in place they have to sue you if you release something called Firefox even if it was derived from Firefox. You can call it shoebox and be fine, but they are exploring if restricting what you can call it is too much for debian's lofty ideals.
    • ...I have never heard the term Firefox before the Firefox browse...

      I liked this [imdb.com] when I was 12-- HBO used to show it all the time:
      "A pilot is sent into the Soviet Union on a mission to steal a prototype jet fighter that can be partially controlled by a neuralink."

      1984-- a very good year-- Macintosh [uriah.com] first appeared, Firefox on HBO, and Airwolf [tv.com] on CBS. Best... tv show theme... ever. [80snostalgia.com]

      • Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by hyc (241590)
        Not only do trademarks have to be registered in a specific field, but they have to be registered in a specific class of product or service. Still, the guiding principle is whether use of the mark will cause confusion for the public.

        When I registered my trademark for my band (Highland Sun, http://www.highlandsun.com/ [highlandsun.com] I received a letter from someone who was registering a mark for "Highland Sun Farms" - a horse ranch somewhere (in Kentucky IIRC) asking me to stop using the name as it infringed on his. Even t

  • Firesomething (Score:5, Funny)

    by kalleguld (624992) on Thursday June 16 2005, @11:55PM (#12838892)
    Good thing I installed that plugin, almost makes the browser change name less often.
  • Well, at least they didn't name it Mad Dog 20/20. Everyone would recognize that as a straight ripoff of a name.
  • As far as I can see the Firefox trademark policy isn't fundamentally different from Debian's own trademark policy.

    If you are distributing what Debian distribute you can call it Debian. If you want to do something different, call it something else.

    Isn't that essentially what the Firefox trademark policy says?
  • FireBird oops that won't work. Ok Foxbird and ThunderFire anyone?

  • This is going to happen again. (Score:5, Funny)

    by merdaccia (695940) on Thursday June 16 2005, @11:59PM (#12838922)
    Why do I have the sinking feeling that we're all going to be sitting here in ten years time, reading about the Godzilla Foundation dispute over ScorchedBadger and LightningParakeet?

  • I really dislike these source-less zdnet articles (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2005, @12:02AM (#12838937)
    So I'm interested in reading the actual discussions on the debian mailinglists - because I have this strange quirk where I actually find them interesting.
    So, google site:lists.debian.org firefox trademark - nothing since february, all of which has long since been resolved. So much for "recently criticised".

    Could we please just stop linking to zdnet/cnet/... articles here on /. ? They're worse than useless.

  • ... a Leonardo Da Quirm replacement name:
    Super-fast-and-cross-platform-and-expandable-free- web-browser.

    I think that just rolls off the tongue, don't you?


  • Rename your browser a few times just to keep the general public too confused to ever really adopt it. If that looks like it's not going to completely do the trick then make a point of choosing some of the stupidest names for the program that you can possibly find.

    Firefox is literally too good to have this stuff keep happening to it. This is what I call a damn shame.

  • What about the GFDL? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jesterzog (189797) on Friday June 17 2005, @12:41AM (#12839097) Homepage Journal

    A few weeks ago, I installed the autoconf package on my Debian system, only to discover that there was no documentation included in the standard /usr/share/doc/autoconf/ location. After checking, I discovered that it'd be recently removed, because Debian considers the GNU Free Documentation Licence -- the main documentation licence promoted by the FSF -- as a non-free licence. (Debian has concerns about how it'd work in DRM environments. The Free Software Foundation doesn't agree.)

    Luckily in that case, there's now an autoconf-doc package in the non-free section of Debian, and I installed that. What confuses me, though, is how Debian expects to cope in the future if it doesn't accept something as the GFDL, which is widely accepted as the Free Software Foundation's GPL-for-documentation, and used in a lot of places related to open source. All of the KDE help files, for instance, are distributed under the GFDL. Debian hasn't cut them yet, but does this mean that it won't be including them as soon as someone realises?

    I really like Debian and I have no plans to stop using it unless it stops being possible to do what I want. I'm impressed by the project's dedication to being so specific about licences, but sometimes I wonder how much of that will eventually come back to haunt it.

    • Re:What about the GFDL? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Phexro (9814) on Friday June 17 2005, @01:16AM (#12839221)
      Debian is definitely pedantic about licenses, but I think that's better than having license issues come back to haunt them in the form of a lawsuit.
    • In Debian's favor, the GFDL really is a crap piece of licensing. It allows you to keep parts of the document proprietary, an act that would have RMS suffering from conniption fits if it were done with software. Unfortunately, the FSF has done a good job of proselytizing the license, so that most people use it out of a knee jerk reaction, instead of actually examing the license for suitability.

      Against Debian, however, is their anal approach to licenses. They are not about freedom, they are a support group f

  • Approved in the US, will register shortly (Score:5, Informative)

    by Animats (122034) on Friday June 17 2005, @12:53AM (#12839138) Homepage
    The US registration status for Firefox [uspto.gov] is "The final review before registration has been completed for this Intent to Use application and it will register in due course."

    The Firefox trademark was allowed for registration on 2005-04-15. It's currently in the "publication and issue section", where they print up the nice certificate with the seal and ribbon and send it to the Mozilla Foundation, print the notice in the Official Gazette of the United States Patent and Trademark Office and send it to all Depositary Libraries, "enter the trademark upon the Principal Register", and do all that 19th century stuff.

    But it's been a done deal since April.

  • Debian Free Software Guidelines (Score:5, Informative)

    by Chuck Chunder (21021) on Friday June 17 2005, @01:43AM (#12839316) Homepage Journal
    State, in part [debian.org]:
    4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code

    The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form _only_ if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software. (This is a compromise. The Debian group encourages all authors not to restrict any files, source or binary, from being modified.)
    Emphasis mine. It seems to me that the "issue" here has already been pretty much covered. The intent seems clear. Although it's not considered ideal Debian seems to have accepted that authors may want derived works to carry different identifiers of one sort or another.

    Maybe it's just a pity it doesn't say:

    The license may require derived works to carry different name, version numbers and/or trademarks from the original software.

  • Trademark in the UK (Score:3, Informative)

    by squoozer (730327) on Friday June 17 2005, @02:06AM (#12839381) Homepage

    Has anyone actually bottered to check the PTO in the UK before going off on one about how Firefox is already registered?

    If you go over there [patent.gov.uk] and have a little look you will notice that the mozilla foundation has filed their trademark application and none of the other firefox applications directly conflict with it. There are others in class 9 but none of them specifically list web browser (which the firefox applicaiton does) as part of the application. The biggest threat, IMHO, is 2007607 which bangs on about software but from an analysis point of view. IANAL but I would say that firefox will probably be granted the trademark in the UK at least.

  • tm in Germany (Score:3, Informative)

    by dtietze (708094) on Friday June 17 2005, @02:38AM (#12839478) Homepage
    Apparently it's been registered in Germany since 1995! "Firefox" as a trademark for use in computer software, computer consulting, etc. (trademark group 42 in the German trademark system) has been registered in 1995 to "Firefox Communications Limited, Solihull, GB". Presumably these are the same folks holding the trademark in GB.
    A short research in the publically searchable database of the German national patent and trademark registry (http://dpinfo.dpma.de/ [dpinfo.dpma.de] would have shown that.
    Since they trademarks have been registered in 1995, I find it highly unlikely (but not infinitely improbable) that they were registered in order to "cash in" on the Firefox browser popularity.
    Mind you, "Firefox" has also been registered by Volkswagen in 2005. So watch out for the new VW Beetle Firefox (with tabbed driver's seat) at a car dealership near you :-))
    Dan.

  • The Real Situation (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gerv (15179) <gerv@ge[ ]net ['rv.' in gap]> on Friday June 17 2005, @04:03AM (#12839749) Homepage
    I'm the person at the MoFo responsible for the trademark discussion with Debian. Please read my blog post [mozillazine.org] on the subject to get the correct story.

  • Thunderbird (Score:3, Informative)

    by Goth Biker Babe (311502) on Friday June 17 2005, @04:41AM (#12839840) Homepage Journal
    Is owned by Triumph Motorcycles [motorcycle-usa.com] both here and in the states. It's licenced to Ford (?) for use on automobiles.
    • You can have multiple users of words like that so long as they don't compete [hint: Apple ... before itunes].

      That and I don't see why they care. Spend more time developing and less time lawyering.

      Tom

    • Fishing line (Score:3, Interesting)

      by XanC (644172)
      I read somewhere (Invention & Technology, maybe?) that nylon fishing line was the fastest adopted technology.

      Cotton needed frequent replacement, and nylon was cheaper than cotton (and didn't wear out). Next time you needed new line, you bought nylon.

        • If you ask people why they have used and still use IE, I'm sure that the vast majority of people will say that "it came with the operating system", not that it was better or worse. Add onto that their security problems, virus issues, spyware issues and so forth, it's no wonder that Firefox is as popular as it is.

          So, regardless of how bad Netscape was, Microsoft, their tactics, and their lack of security are still the primary reasons why Firefox was deemed to be necessary and was therefore created. If I
      • Get a clue! You sound like with the Debian Social Contract, Microsoft would be walking all over everything. But reality shows something else. Reality shows NON-DEBIAN distros emerging, growing and putting down deep roots, even at the same time that Microsoft is a monopoly. Mandrake, SuSE, Slackware, Gentoo, et al, do not operate under the Debian Social Contract. They include <gastp> GFDL documentation. They include <gastp> Firefox. Back when Debian said KDE was illegal, they included <gastp
          • Actually it was Redhat (as in GNOME) who first declared KDE to be illegal. Only Debian believed them. Everyone else who looked at the issue dismissed the fearmongering.

            But the damage has been done. Even as recently as two months ago Debian was on the kde-core mailing list claiming that the QPL was no longer a Free license, despite RMS' assurances that it is.
      • I'm sorry but how do contract, rules and regulations promote freedom?

        Restrictions, restrict freedom. Do you have a different dictionary than the rest of the world?

        I respect that it is your right to shackle yourself with whatever rules/social contract etc... you want but that has nothing to do with promoting "freedom".

    • Re:Sigh... (Score:5, Informative)

      by RedWizzard (192002) on Friday June 17 2005, @02:30AM (#12839459)
      But they forgot to trademark firefox? Whoooopppps!
      They didn't forget to trademark Firefox. They just haven't had it issued yet, though it soon will be. They also may not be able to get the trademark in every country (what a suprise!).
      • When I hear "firefox" or "phoenix," in no way would I automatically think of a web browser, or a software program at all.

        Because "Outlook" certainly sounds like an email client and "Excel" just makes you automatically think of a spreadsheet... And infact, how do "Cheerios" tell you they're a breakfast cerial? Please...

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