Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute [LWN.net]

Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute

Posted Nov 24, 2011 3:09 UTC (Thu) by Eliot (subscriber, #19701)
In reply to: Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute by djzort
Parent article: Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute

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!

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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."