In 2004, I founded Follow Function LLC with my business partner, Steven Schranz. It’s an online store for modern design and the stories behind the designers. It’s awesome. If you don’t believe me, check it out yourself. That year,…

So you’re not paying Red Hat anymore… but you’re still using their product. Impressive move!

http://fsturl.com/1R

“”"”Canonical owns a number of trademarks and these include UBUNTU, KUBUNTU, EDUBUNTU, and XUBUNTU. The trademarks are registered in both word and logo form. Any mark ending with the letters UBUNTU or BUNTU is sufficiently similar to one or more of the trademarks that permission will be needed in order to use it.”"”"

[quote]Should the clerk research every company? [/quote]

He should have at least a general recognition of who is who in their industry and the areas that are closely related. To expect somebody at Red Hat to know what DataPortability.org is does not seem unreasonable to me at all. And even if they don’t, the “research” could have been 2 minutes on Google.

[quote]Should he politely call every company?[/quote]

Probably, and especially so if it’s somebody who isn’t a competitor / enemy. If it was Microsoft or Novell using a logo similar to the Fedora Logo, the reaction would be a little more understandable. But even then, a little politeness never killed anybody.

[quote] Should he wait a few months to see if they make some changes and then call again?[/quote]

Yes.

[quote] And then politely mention the cease and desist?[/quote]

If the accused infringer had a productive talk with RH and said “ok, we’ll change it” I don’t think it would be unreasonable to ask “when” and to *then* send the C&D if it isn’t changed in that timeframe.

Nobody is saying anything about puppy dogs and butterflies here, what I’m saying is that a little bit of reason, common sense, and decency goes a long way, and avoids a lot of negative press and bad blood. And that’s especially critical to a company like Red Hat whose fortunes are all about their ability to build and sustain relationships. See the above comment about switching to CentOS, for example. RH’s bits can be easily duplicated… if they tick off enough people, and the wrong people, their customers could easily jump to Oracle’s Linux offering, CentOS or a new company that doesn’t even exist yet. Taking the “shotgun approach” with C&D letters is NOT a good play for an Open Source company.

I think this is the best course of action, it solves the conflict with the logo by creating a new one as well as gives the community a say in the new logo. DataPortability is all about the community after all.

I’ve seen a few things about Fedora recently in my dashboard and I finally decided to take a look at what the stories have all been about. I read TechCrunch’s take on the logo war Red Hat is bringing on the DataPortability WorkGroup. My fir…