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Cease and Desist from Watchfire

Erik Max Francis max at alcyone.com
Tue Aug 8 20:09:08 EDT 2000 
marduk wrote:

> I will be consulting with free software leaders out there about what
> would be the best action for me to take.  But right now I want to
> clarify that linbot is software distributed under the GPL and so
> is Public software belonging to the People.  I want to emphasize this
> because, although I have been the main contributer to the work, I
> do not see myself having ownership of the software.  I believe this
> is implied by the GPL itself, but I am no lawyer and so I would
> like to say so explicitely.

None of this is relevant (and it _is_ still your software -- GPL'ed
software is still under copyright, otherwise the GPL wouldn't work),
because the complaint you're getting is about _trademarks_, not
copyrights.  Whether or not you have GPL'd the software, or even made it
public domain, or whether or not you profit from the software, or
whether or not you still even distribute the software, WatchFire's
complaint (presumably) is that they are concerned your software's name
will dilute their trademark.

Trademark law is quite different from copyright law; under trademark law
you _must_ bring suits against potential infringers if you want to be
assured of keeping your trademark.  (That is, if you don't bring suit
against blatant infringers and then down the road try against another,
that infringer can point at the past instances when you did not defend
the trademark in their defense.)

Regardless of the state (copyright, license, etc.) of your software,
it's pretty clear that "linbot" is a derivative of "LinkBot," and so
they certainly have a point.  It certainly may not be your intent to
dliute their trademark, but for all they know it might, and given the
similarity in names (and presumably also the similarity in
functionality?), they probably feel obliged to start the lawyers in
motion on stopping you.

I am not familiar with your software, but I get the impression that
since it _is_ a clone of theirs, they would probably win a suit.  Would
it kill you to rename your software?  You _did_ make a clone of their
software and give it a very similar name, after all.

[Standard disclaimer:  I am not a lawyer.]

-- 
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