what to do about annoying trademark use?

[Fernando Frediani]

+1 for Sam's suggestion.
Makes sense and sounds pretty reasonable.

Fernando

On 01/11/2020 15:42, Sam Kuper wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 01, 2020 at 02:29:48AM +0000, Daniel Golle wrote:
>> So NXP has released something they call NXP Layerscape OpenWrt 20.09
>>
>> So not only they use the OpenWrt brand name, they have also released
>> their fork with a version which looks like it could be an official
>> OpenWrt release and will make people think that they should annoy us
>> when it comes to getting support for that.
>>
>> I'm not suggesting to do anything about that in terms of legal action
>> (as that would be even more annoying for everyone involved), but I
>> think we should do something to prevent that from happening even more
>> in future.
>>
>> We are closing bug reports (especially for LuCI) on dialy basis where
>> people request support for software which looks like it was an OpenWrt
>> release but turns out to be a vendor-fork.
>>
>> Debian also managed to make vendors name their forks differently, ie.
>> Raspbian and such. ASUSWrt is kind of a good example of how it would
>> be done the right way for OpenWrt (at least in my opinion).
> OpenWrt recently joined the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC):
> https://sfconservancy.org/projects/current/ .
>
> The SFC is designed to help member projects to deal with problems like
> this: https://sfconservancy.org/projects/services/ .
>
> So, as a first step, those with standing to act on OpenWrt's behalf
> (committers/Decisionmakers? or whoever has been designated as OpenWrt's
> liaison with the SFC?) should probably communicate the concerns to the
> SFC.  The SFC should then propose possible next steps & state the
> benefits or disadvantages of each.
>
> As for legal action: IANAL but I think in at least some jurisdictions,
> trade marks lose validity if not enforced.  If so, the SFC may advise
> legal action against NXP & other vendors abusing OpenWrt trade marks
> (because otherwise OpenWrt would lose those trade marks).
>
> The action might not involve going to court, it might initially just be
> a "cease & desist" letter sent to the vendors, perhaps stating that an
> acceptable resolution would be for the vendor to rename any forks they
> might create (e.g. "NXPwrt" or whatever).  Only if the vendors persist
> in abusing the trade mark might stronger action be needed.
>