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Koha creators asking for help in trademark disputeKoha creators asking for help in trademark disputePosted Nov 22, 2011 18:15 UTC (Tue) by ajross (subscriber, #4563)Parent article: Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute 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?
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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.
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