Question about trademarks in code

[Alexander Schmehl]

Hi!

* James Damour <JDAMOUR at nycap.rr.com> [060126 13:10]:

> [..]  Now I am faced with a dillema: MegaMek has some class names that
> are registered trademarks, so I'm worried about including it in the
> Debian.  I'd *hate* for Debian to receive a Cease & Desist order and
> have to do an emergency removal of the package (*especially* from
> stable).

Uhm... why only for Debian?  Couldn't other distributions or even source
forge be affected to by those trademarks?


> I asked on debian-legal, and they recommended against using trademarked
> terms, so I've started work on santizing the code by renaming or
> removing all trademarked terms, but the resulting code can't be used to
> play with anyone using the MegaMek game (downloaded from SourceForge).
> Not to mention that it's a fork of the code, and a lot of work.

I might me a bit naive there, but if you fear to get in conflict with
trademarks, shouldn't you change that not only for Debian but in
general?  So this problem wouldn't occure, since all names in all copies
of the game (save those who have an old one) would have been renamed...

Other possibilitie:  Would it be possible to change the game, so that it
doesn't rely on the names but on (numerical) unique ID?


> Am I being overly paranoid?  Di I have the correct level of paranoia,
> and should complete my sanitation and then package it?  Should I just
> abandon hope of including my pet project in Debian?  

No, you are not.  Search the listarchive of debian-legal for "firefox".
You wouldn't expect, what problems trademarks can become.


Yours sincerely,
  Alexander

-- 
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