Re: Express Logic claims GUIX trademark

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <somebody@not-sent-or-endorsed-by.tobias.gr>]

Guix, mikadoZero,

I know you're not a fan of [the common pronunciation of] the name 
Guix, but going straight from my ironic quote of a shitty PDF to a 
public and ‘proactive name change’ proposal is at best premature.

> If it is the case that Guix the free software project does not 
> have a
> trademark for Guix, then I would like to share what looks like a 
> clear
> parallel.  It involves another free software project that used 
> to be
> called Jade.  Jade did not have a trademark for Jade.  A 
> software
> company had the trademark for Jade.  The company forced Jade to 
> change
> it's name.

Wow.  That's super disingenuous (by ‘that’ I mean the original 
posts[0], which you accurately paraphrase).  It certainly didn't 
leave me with the favourable impression of the Free software 
project that was probably intended.

Yes, if you start a software repo in 2010 using the name that a 
software(!) company had registered in 2003 for their (you guessed 
it) software, you might be ‘forced’ to be just a bit more 
original.  The heart truly weeps.  At least they restyled 
themselves Pug and not UnderDog.

So no, and luckily for everyone, there are few parallels to Guix 
to be found here.

It took me all of 20 seconds to find the actual GUIX trademark 
registration[1], so we can stop basing this discussion on 
regrettable typographical choices in press releases.

It's 4 months old.

Meanwhile, we have:

  commit 207cba8114d354737b231e510d6110ea2a42e07b
  Author: Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org>
  Date:   Wed Apr 18 23:21:11 2012 +0200

    Initial commit.

Do 6+ years of prior public use trump registration?  Not 
necessarily, but it's a far cry from what the Jade-lang folks did.

I think we should talk to a lawyer.

Kind regards,

T G-R

[0]: https://github.com/pugjs/pug/issues/2184
[1]: 
http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87948650&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch