[License-discuss] Question: is the following paragraph in violation of OSD6

[Bruce Perens]

On Sat, Oct 5, 2024 at 9:08 PM Roland Turner via License-discuss <
license-discuss at lists.opensource.org> wrote:

> On 4/10/24 04:12, Lucy Brown via License-discuss wrote:
> I'd suggest that there are better ways of drafting this, in particular
> that it needs to be clear in a legally robust sense what the Standard
> Version is
>

Good catch. The obvious thing you should do, Lucy, is file a trademark. Or
two, one for public use and one for use with the definitive version. And
make a policy for them.  Debian's trademark policy is one example, see
https://www.debian.org/trademark.

This is not to say that you should actually pursue creating a new copyright
license for software. You probably should find an approved one that you
like and make a trademark policy in a separate document. See recent
discussion on this list for why.

Also, please be aware that there are different main kinds of intellectual
property: copyright, patent, trademark, moral rights, trade secret. All of
these have different complications in law that you may not be aware of. You
get your copyright automatically the moment you type something in ("affix
it in a permanent medium", to be technical). You do _not_ get your
trademark without filing and paying, and even though you have stated your
preference for the representation of the original version in your license,
you would probably find it unnecessarily difficult to enforce without a
trademark.

For the nerds: I was able to think of three unusual forms of intellectual
property: mask rights, appellations, the Smokey Bear Act and its ilk. Any
more?

    Thanks

    Bruce
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