> From: Lawrence Lessig > Of course if you object, we'll move on. But I would be really > grateful if you didn't. First, in the spirit Nelson wrote about, > while I certainly think it was my job to acknowledge the source (and > again, mea culpa that I didn't),
> it doesn't seem appropriate to ask permission. This is not a matter of cultural freedom, but of truth. If you are aware that through using someone else's name to identify something insufficiently distinct that you risk misrepresenting them, then you must take pains to avoid it. Either through not using their name, through clarification that your use of the name does not identify them, or through agreement that they are happy for any association or nominal equivalence to develop, or even that they will discontinue use of the name for themselves. So, I'd say that a request for permission would not seem to be inappropriate. However, I wouldn't have phrased the requirement here as one for permission, but for agreement (and only potentially, arbitration). > Second, it would be weird if you would object to our > building upon your building upon my work. It would be weird if it was an issue of cultural freedom, but it isn't. > Third, I can't see people > are going to confuse the icon with the movement. That's how TM > lawyers think. Which is to say, that's how we shouldn't think. However free culture gets, we will still have names, and we will still need to take pains to avoid confusion and misrepresentation when the same names are used in overlapping contexts. I'd agree that a trademark should not constitute exclusive possession of the symbol or name (as trademark litigation has tended to pretend) - it should always be freely usable in unambiguous and distinct contexts, or when its use in an otherwise ambiguous circumstance is rectified by explicit disambiguation. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
