trademarked logos and GPL

[John Cowan]

Lawrence E. Rosen wrote:

 > For example, it was
 > because of mistakes made early in the game that the open source
 > community lost all opportunity to obtain a trademark on "open
 > source."

Hmm, interesting.  I thought it was because of the descriptive
nature of the proposed mark, which would make it unregisterable
*a priori*.

What mistakes were these?  Those who know history may not
be condemned to repeat it.

 > (Earlier this afternoon I
 > was privately reminded -- by someone with perhaps an excess of
 > protectionist tendencies -- of the California statute that provides
 >  that "Any person . . . practicing law who is not an active member
 > of the State Bar is guilty of a misdemeanor.")

Surely saying that the law is such and such, as long as you don't
masquerade as a lawyer, doesn't count as the practice of law!

-- 
There is / one art             || John Cowan <jcowan at reutershealth.com>
no more / no less              || http://www.reutershealth.com
to do / all things             || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
with art- / lessness           \\ -- Piet Hein