[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen trademark policy

[Ben Shum]

Question, where do we plan to enforce the trademark "EGILS"?  As far as 
I knew, this has only been used for the "official" twitter hashtag 
#egils, but I wouldn't have imagined one would trademark a hashtag.

Or is the intent that we may someday use the acronym EGILS and it's now 
to be an official term for the project?

-- Ben

On 09/14/2012 11:21 AM, 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

-- 
Benjamin Shum
Open Source Software Coordinator
Bibliomation, Inc.
32 Crest Road
Middlebury, CT 06762
203-577-4070, ext. 113