Free Software And Trademarks

Posted Sep 2, 2005 23:06 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
In reply to: Free Software And Trademarks by MathFox
Parent article: Free Software And Trademarks

Those are clever arguments, but you'd be better off abandonning them because they're too difficult to defend and unnecessary to your point.

You obviously have a solid understanding of the fundamental purpose of trademark law and how controlling the Firefox trademark serves it. Why go into these creative ways that trademark can be exploited to solve problems it was never intended for?

There's an even more basic counterfeiting scenario than the ones you've proposed so far: A bunch of people, for whatever reason, start making their own variations on Firefox, under the same name. None of them is nefarious, but they don't work very well, and when they do, they all work differently. Now Firefox gets a bad name. People know Firefox as the thing that has more bugs than Internet Explorer and works differently on every computer. So they all cling to IE, losing the chance to use a superior browser: the original Firefox.