Delirium writes: >> I would personally hope that our main interest in the trademarks is >> not >> their commercial value, but their usefulness in furthering our stated >> charitable mission, by reducing confusion on the part of potential >> users >> and reusers of our content.
You needn't worry on that score. I think you probably understood the reference to "commercial value" as an indication of an effort on the Foundation's part to completely exploit Wikimedia trademarks for commercial purposes. In reality, we mostly don't take advantage of opportunities to do that, but we need to secure the trademarks anyway to ensure that other entities don't misleadingly employ our trademarks in commercial ways. That said, we do look at business opportunities in which we promote our mission through licensing of our trademarks to a partner -- typically a partner that provides access to Wikimedia project reference materials or that supports our own capacity to provide such access. We also reserve the right to license the trademark for the production of things Wikimedians tend to want, like T-shirts and coffee mugs. Without criticizing Mozilla at all, I'll note that we're not that much like Mozilla in the scale on which license trademarks commercially. It's probably difficult for anyone outside the Foundation to imagine the sheer number of licensing opportunities we turn down on a daily or weekly basis. I've also been told that, in comparison to other nonprofits that hold commercially valuable trademarks, we're remarkably *un*aggressive in policing them. You might almost think the Foundation's legal strategy were being run by a free-speech lawyer. --Mike _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
