Ubuntu’s trademark folly fueled by confusion over law, EFF says

Canonical's enforcement of the trademark for Ubuntu put egg on the company's face last week when it went after a website critical of its approach to user privacy. A website called "Fix Ubuntu," which provides instructions for disabling an Internet search mechanism in the Ubuntu operating system, received a letter asking it to change its domain name and stop using the Ubuntu logo.

The website is run by Micah Lee, a technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the EFF quickly informed Canonical that "the First Amendment fully protects the use of trademarked terms and logos in non-commercial websites that criticize and comment upon corporations and products."

Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth admitted on his blog that the letter to Lee was a mistake. But he also claimed that his company must enforce its trademarks or lose them:

We do have to “enforce” those trademarks, or we lose them. That means:

• we have an email address, trademarks@ubuntu.com, where people can request permission to use the name and logo
• we actively monitor, mostly using standard services, use of the name and logo
• we aim to ensure that every use of the name and logo is supported by a “license” or grant of permission

Nazer pointed to the fact that our previous article included an Ubuntu logo. "Will Canonical 'lose' this trademark if it doesn’t 'enforce' it against Ars Technica? Of course not," Nazer wrote. "Ars Technica’s use is not even arguably infringement. And even if it was, failure to respond to every last act of infringement does not result in abandonment."

Nazer says the EFF takes Shuttleworth at his word when he says that Canonical didn't mean to act like a trademark bully. "This seems to be a case of mindless over-enforcement rather than malice," he wrote. "But this routine over-enforcement of trademark rights is unnecessary and feeds a censorship culture."

Source : Ars Technica