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Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute
Koha is a free library management system created by the Horowhenua Library
Trust in New Zealand. This software has been the subject of an ongoing
fight with a US company called LibLime, which seems to want to take the
software proprietary; LWN reported on this
dispute in 2010. Now the Horowhenua Library Trust is asking for
help; it seems that LibLime now thinks it is entitled to a trademark on
the Koha name in New Zealand. "The situation we find ourselves in,
is that after over a year of battling against it, PTFS/Liblime have managed
to have their application for a Trademark on Koha in New Zealand
accepted. We now have 3 months to object, but to do so involves lawyers and
money. We are a small semi rural Library in New Zealand and have no cash
spare in our operational budget to afford this, but we do feel it is
something we must fight."
(Log in to post comments)
Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute Posted Nov 22, 2011 18:15 UTC (Tue) by ajross (subscriber, #4563) [Link] Note that the summary here leaves out a lot of the complexity of the case. LibLime apparently owns the copyright to the Koha code, maintains the koha.org web site, and is run by a former Koha developer. When this was reported before, it was in the context of a free-to-commercial fork of an open source project. I know nothing about New Zealand's trademark law, but this certainly muddles the issue. Can the "project" maintain a trademark on a product owned and sold by another party?
Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute Posted Nov 22, 2011 19:36 UTC (Tue) by moguro (guest, #57475) [Link]
As koha is released under GNU GPL v2, the assertion that "...LibLime apparently owns the copyright to the Koha code" is utterly false.
The koha project's website is http://koha-community.org/, the koha.org website was usurped by ptfs/liblime.
More information can be found here:
http://mmitblog.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/about-the-koha-t...
and some background info here:
http://lwn.net/Articles/386284/
Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute Posted Nov 22, 2011 20:02 UTC (Tue) by csamuel (✭ supporter ✭, #2624) [Link]
The GPL does not remove copyright, it depends on it. So code released under the GPL will still have copyright associated with it, it just has a different importance than for proprietary code.
Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute Posted Nov 22, 2011 20:43 UTC (Tue) by gidoca (subscriber, #62438) [Link]
True, but the individual contributors hold the copyright, not LibLime alone.
Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute Posted Nov 22, 2011 21:59 UTC (Tue) by macc (subscriber, #510) [Link]
The topic is trademark not copyright.
Commercial entity LibLime is going for ownership of the trademark "Koha" in NZ.
IMHO a bad faith thing. ( and should be voided, usually you can't trademark a previously used by others tag as your own)
IANAL and all that jazz.
Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute Posted Nov 24, 2011 20:15 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] The topic is trademark not copyright. Actually, the topic of this subthread is copyright. It applies to the trademark master topic because if someone owns the copyright on X, it's powerful reason to believe that, when you look closer, you'll find he also owns the trademark people use to refer to X.
Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute Posted Nov 22, 2011 22:13 UTC (Tue) by ranginui (guest, #65927) [Link]
I wonder who this former developer is?
And the following comments are right, liblime/ptfs owns copyright to some of the code, and by any measure not the majority.
This also has nothing to do with them trying to trademark Koha in NZ
Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute Posted Nov 23, 2011 9:15 UTC (Wed) by slef (subscriber, #14720) [Link]
The dispute is on several fronts (sadly), but HLT is the original commissioner of the system. They're the first user, if you will, and they've been continuously using the project's output. That's why this should attract wider interest: if the initiator of a FOSS project can be deprived of the name, is any FOSS project name safe for any user? Are project names only controllable by developers, not users?
Many Koha support and development providers have been around much longer than PTFS. PTFS acquired the interest underlying their claim by buying a company which bought the division of the company first hired by the original commissioner. Of course, they can't buy the Horowhenua Library Trust, so it looks like trademark law is being used to try to restrict them.
Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute Posted Nov 23, 2011 11:17 UTC (Wed) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
I guess an economical decision is needed here. If Koha has the resources, and think the best way to expend those resources is fighting for their name instead of changing it for something else, "Hoka" for example, then go ahead and fight.
My expectation is that they will come to the conclusion that what they could get out of the fight is not really worth it.
We do need to stop feeding the lawyers at some point. The same observation than bigger armies do not lead to more peace applies to them also.
Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute Posted Nov 23, 2011 21:55 UTC (Wed) by PaulWay (✭ supporter ✭, #45600) [Link]
...instead of changing it for something else, "Hoka" for example...
Because words in another language don't have to mean anything, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koha_%28custom%29
If you ran a program called Farb and someone was trying to trademark it, would you be happy if someone else suggested that you could just call your project Barf?
Personally I'm absolutely outraged - but not surprised - that Liblime is doing this. As the previous excellent LWN article explains, the Koha codebase has a lot of strange and sometimes ugly history behind it. I'm not surprised that an American company now considers trademarking the name as 'just doing business' when they're going to cause their community and customers a lot of angst.
Have fun,
Paul
Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute Posted Nov 24, 2011 11:23 UTC (Thu) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
> Personally I'm absolutely outraged.
Me too. But ask yourself: is it really worth it? I will probably feel better _if_ I win, but:
And yes, words mean things, but the dictionary is full of them. There are plenty of examples of projects that changed names for several reasons, and nothing bad did happen. Remember the Phoenix browser? Maybe you will recognize it better if I use it's current name: Firefox.
Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute Posted Nov 23, 2011 12:06 UTC (Wed) by djzort (guest, #57189) [Link]
there are a whole language of interesting sounding maori words, just pick another one and move on.
Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute Posted Nov 23, 2011 12:52 UTC (Wed) by BlueLightning (subscriber, #38978) [Link]
Should we really be sending a message that it's OK for a company (or even a small section of a community) to co-opt the name of an open source project for their own purposes, against the will of the remainder of the community?
Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute Posted Nov 24, 2011 3:09 UTC (Thu) by Eliot (subscriber, #19701) [Link]
As others have implied, "Koha" is not just an 'interesting sounding word'. It is a word with a meaning, understood by most New Zealanders, even those that don't speak reo Maori.
Loosely translated as "gift", it contains implications of contribution, reciprocity etc. (in this case to the library community), a very appropriate concept for free software.
Which makes it all the more ironic that someone want to own it!
Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute Posted Nov 24, 2011 17:39 UTC (Thu) by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033) [Link]
Is Maori an official language in New Zealand?
If so, could you counter-attack later by using something like the UK's Trades Descriptions Act? Charging money for something called "Gift" in Maori? Also might there be a Maori lawyer who'd take the case pro bono, to defend his people's language against misuse and misappropriation as a trademark?
Didn't Apache very nearly lose their trademark to the Apache nation, before they managed to convince the native Americans that the use of the name of their tribe wasn't an insult?
If this battle isn't worth fighting, I hope the commercial outfit is watched very carefully for GPL violations, and jumped on with both feet if/when it does.
Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute Posted Nov 24, 2011 20:49 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] Didn't Apache very nearly lose their trademark to the Apache nation, Sounds iffy to me. First of all, there isn't any legal Apache Indian entity that could own a trademark. There are a bunch of US-government-recognized Indian tribes that have traditionally been called Apache, but those are essentially US government agencies; they couldn't own a trademark. There are corporations attached to most Indian tribes to do non-governmental things, but they couldn't own a name which is obviously just the name of their tribe. And finally, the name is traditional. It was made up by Europeans to refer to a group of people that isn't even well defined (they all looked the same to Europeans, after all) long before modern trademarks. You might just as well claim "Gypsy."
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