All,OpenOffice.org is very pleased to announce that through the pro-bono work of the Law Firm of Oppedahl & Olson, LLP, we have received trademark protection in the US and we can now use OpenOffice.org®. You know, OpenOffice.org with the registered trademark symbol. Of course, the symbol should only be used for official communication and at that, sparingly--but informatively. The trademark protection will help us in several areas, such as with CDROM and other distribution problems. Today's announcement regarding OpenOffice.org 2.0.2 is the first to use the official ®.
Our thanks to Carl Oppedahl and his team for making this possible! Team OpenOffice.org and I acted on behalf of OpenOffice.org. We followed the repeatedly expressed wishes of the community and also common sense.
As mentioned, the trademark protection extends for right now just to the United States, though we are pursuing international trademark protection. We have acted on this--getting OpenOffice.org trademarked--with some discretion because we didn't want to broadcast our vulnerabilities too much.
The history of OOo's trademark is long and varied. We've sometimes had it, sometimes not. In countries like Brazil, we do not evidently have it, and as a consequence, the Brazilian group have had to distribute OOo under a different name. Let's see to it that such unfortunate situations do not occur again.
Cheers, Louis
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