[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen trademark policy

[Lazar, Alexey Vladimirovich]

Does this policy need to address any future rebranding, like logo updates? Or is that outside of the scope?

Also, this trademark policy is only valid in the USA, right?

On Sep 14, 2012, at 10:21 , Galen Charlton wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> The Evergreen Oversight Board has been working with Tony Sebro, an
> attorney for the Software Freedom Conservancy, on a policy for the use
> of Evergreen's word and logo trademarks.  On Wednesday, 12 September,
> the Oversight Board voted to recommend the proposed policy to
> community and other interested parties for consideration and feedback.
> 
> The text of the proposed policy can be found at
> 
> http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=governance:trademark-policy
> 
> Here's some historical background.  Since the beginning of the
> project, the Evergreen trademarks have been held and administered by
> the University System of Georgia Board of Regents on behalf of GPLS
> and the Evergreen Project in general.  After the Evergreen Project
> joined the Software Freedom Conservancy, the Conservancy at the
> request of the Oversight Board and general community sentiment entered
> into negotiations with the BOR to transfer the trademark to the SFC.
> By August 8th, the Conservancy and the Board of Regents executed a
> trademark assignment agreement, meaning that the Conservancy now holds
> the Evergreen trademarks on behalf of the Evergreen Project.
> 
> The purpose of the the trademark policy is to permit appropriate of
> the Evergreen logo and word marks to refer to the free and open source
> software we've all worked hard to create, support, and use while
> protecting the trademark from misuse or appropriation.  The policy is
> not meant to be a burden on any reasonable use of the trademarks, but
> for historical reasons that should be well known to anybody who has
> followed the development of open source ILSs, it is crucial that the
> trademark be held in community hands and protected to avoid any
> potential confusion about what Evergreen is.
> 
> The community review period will extend though October 13, 2012, after
> which the Board will vote on whether to adopt the policy, along with
> any revisions that arise from community feedback.  I would request
> that general feedback take place on the open-ils-general mailing list,
> but if there are any parties that currently use the Evergreen
> trademark who have specific questions regarding whether their use of
> the marks will be permitted under the policy, they should also feel
> free to contact the Oversight Board directly.  In particular, as a
> specific issue that is known to affect current users of the trademark,
> the trademark policy requires that if an entity uses Evergreen as part
> of their name, any graphical logos representing that entity *must* use
> the Evergreen logo to avoid creating a competing graphic mark.
> 
> Upon adoption of the policy, there will be a period of three months
> for users of the trademarks to come into compliance with the policy.
> I should emphasize that while the Oversight Board and the Conservancy
> is obligated to actively defend the trademark and adhere to the policy
> in order to retain it on behalf of the project, we are committed to
> working to resolve any issues with current uses of the mark in a
> friendly fashion.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Galen
> -- 
> Galen Charlton
> Director of Implementation
> Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts
> email:  gmc at esilibrary.com
> direct: +1 770-709-5581
> cell:   +1 404-984-4366
> skype:  gmcharlt
> web:    http://www.esilibrary.com/
> Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org &
> http://evergreen-ils.org


Alexey Lazar
PALS
Information System Developer and Integrator
507-389-2907
http://www.mnpals.org/