I see that the confusion between trademark and copyright won't die down.
First people say that because one person owns a copyright on one daemon
image, *all* daemon images are copyright to that person (FALSE).

Now, I read on a recent thread here that TNF was "required" by copyright
law to legally move to defend their rights or they could lose the
associated intellectual property.

I am not a lawyer.  I also do not mean to jump on anyone in particular.
But I want to highlight this issue since it keeps cropping up:


There are two (2) forms of intellectual property at issue.  One is
the copyright and the other is the trademark.

Copyright does *not* require you to act to enforce it (insofar as
I have ever heard).  You can choose to wink at one offender and
sue another.  Copyrights cover particular expressions (such as a
book, or a single image of the daemon).  I can write another book
or draw a new image of the daemon.  As long as I didn't use a camera
or tracing paper or some such, the new daemon image is mine---even
if it really looks like the same guy depicted in some other image
under copyright by someone else.  Likewise, as long as the book
that I write is my own work, it's mine.  I don't need to worry
about being sued.

I don't think that copyrights would have been enough to cause much
of a stir here.

Trademarks are different.  A trademark identifies a concept or
property with a particular likeness (or term).  If someone actually
had a trademark on the daemon (using him in different poses just
for their product), then it could be used to identify their product
as much as a trademarked name such as "UNIX(tm)".  Failure to
prosecute and block "theft" of a trademark renders it generic.
Once it is generic, it no longer exclusively represents a single
product, product line, company, or whatever.  Once you've lost
that, I think that the trademark is pretty much gone forever.


Again, I am not a lawyer, but that is what I have understood to
more or less cover how trademarks and copyrights vary.  TNF is not
obligated to protect its copyrights if it chooses not to do so.
But failure to protect its trademark(s) would be folly.  With TNF's
trademarks new, it is understandable if TNF may be err on the side
of overprotection.

An IP lawyer should be able to tell you what you can get away with
(and what TNF could afford to forgive without *formal* action).

It seems to me that as programmers and system administrators, we should
value more than the average person well-defined terms, so I took the time
to share this.  (^&  Someone with a better grasp of intellectual
property may wish to elaborate.


In addition to responding a statement made in a recent thread, I think
that people thinking about NetBSD advocacy should bear in mind
trademark issues before speaking out for (or on behalf of) NetBSD/TNF.


(ramble)

-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/