Inappropriate use of the Debian logo?
The debian-legal is a great source of knowledge about legal issues related to FLOSS. A couple of days ago one of the contributors sent a mail informing that a computer shop has taken the Debian logo and used it for his business.
The Debian Open User Logo without the word “Debian” (they call it DOUL-nd) is released under the terms of a license similar to MIT, as specified on http://www.debian.org/logos/
If the people from http://www.legendpc.co.nz/ copied the logo from Debian it could be a copyright infringement problem because there is no mention to the license. The violation is about the following statement:
“The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.”
If they do that, they would be in compliance with the license of the DOUL-nd
On the other hand, what if they just obtained it from scratch? According to a message in the debian-legal mailing list the swirl is just one of the defaults. Some contributors were discussing if that would be relevant for a trademark violation, in those cases what matters is whether the image is confusingly similar to an existing trademark. The point here is the swirl is not trademark, what Debian has under trademark is the Debian name and as a consequence the logo that contains the “Debian” label.
This morning Stefano Zacchiroli (the Debian leader) has forwarded the issue to the SPI lawyer, it seems that the idea is to send a letter to the domain owner requesting to come into compliance with the licensing term of the Debian swirl.
References:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2010/11/msg00056.html
Libre Software People's Front 
I have gone to http://www.legend.co.nz, but the redirects to http://www.legendinternational.co.nz/
John Ortiz
December 8, 2010 at 12:03 pm
Thanks for your message John, the correct URL is http://www.legendpc.co.nz/
sanacl
December 8, 2010 at 6:50 pm
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December 8, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Do they provide debian installed servers or desktops?
If not this could be taken as false advertising. Giving appearance you provide a particular product in this case Debian when you don’t.
People always think trademarks are the only issue here.
oiaohm
December 8, 2010 at 11:47 pm
Interesting point, it seems they only provide hardware. In any case the lawyers are having a look at the issue, let’s see what they think.
sanacl
December 8, 2010 at 11:58 pm
[…] Inappropriate use of the Debian logo? The point here is the swirl is not trademark… […]
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December 9, 2010 at 12:32 am
Under trademark law, owners of trademarks who use their trademarks improperly or who fail to police the use
of their trademarks by others may lose their rights in those trademarks. For instance, now-common words such
as “zipper” and “elevator” were trademarks at one time. Their owners allowed the marks to be widely known
and used as generic names for the associated products, and, as a result, all trademark protection was lost. Some
examples of trademarks that are protected by their owners at great lengths today from such “genericide” include
Kleenex® brand facial tissues, Band-Aid® brand bandages and Xerox® brand photocopiers. In addition to
monitoring the use of trademarks by others, policing also requires maintaining control over the nature and quality of the goods and services that are marketed under the trademarks.
eric
December 9, 2010 at 3:36 am
Let me get this straight… Debian told Mozilla that they were wrong to enforce their trademark for Firefox. Mozilla disagreed. Debian decided that Mozilla were being a bunch of weasels, so they released Iceweasel (Firefox with Debian changes and no Firefox trademarks) instead.
Now, somebody has misappropriated THEIR trademark and their response is to call in the lawyers??? Please.
sgtrock
December 9, 2010 at 10:14 pm
How can there be any debate whether or not they lifted it from Debian? It’s EXACTLY the same logo, just a different color. Even using the default “rough charcoal” swatch from Illustrator, it would be nearly impossible to reproduce the Debian swirl so exactly unless you had it side by side and did it on purpose. No, these guys copied the logo, changed the color and called it their own. Lawyers will determine whether it’s legal or not, but what’s not up for debate is it was a crappy thing to do. Especially to flat out lie and say that they created it.
Pike
December 10, 2010 at 4:12 am