Apache's trademarks, including the HADOOP and APACHE HADOOP trademarks, can be applied to software distributed by Apache Software Foundation. Once distributed by us, we permit that software to be redistributed by others. (E.g., Best Buy can put APACHE HADOOP on their store shelves if they want to.) Under default trademark law, those others can distribute HADOOP and APACHE HADOOP only if it is a redistribution of *our* HADOOP or APACHE HADOOP software. (That's why you can buy Jello Brand gelatin at Safeway.) Those trademarks are our names for our software. ASF is the source and origin of those software goods. Nobody else can apply those trademarks to their own software.
That doesn't mean that the entire third party software distribution must be *our* software, although to claim that such a larger distribution *is* HADOOP or APACHE HADOOP would be trademark infringement. So the real question we should be asking is: How can we encourage third parties use our HADOOP and APACHE HADOOP trademarks properly to indicate that their unique third party software *contains, or works with, or includes, or is a plug-in for, or is a larger distribution of, or supports* APACHE HADOOP? Companies use lots of marketing techniques to protect their trademarks and simultaneously to let third parties help to advertise those trademarked goods and generate goodwill for them. Apache should consider doing some of the same things. It will be to our advantage to have HADOOP and APACHE HADOOP software better known and widely used throughout the world. For that purpose, we should be defining the rules we want to *encourage* third parties to follow, not arguing about derivative work analysis or voting on whether or not something is a trademark. As you look around the web for the software products you buy, which trademark marketing techniques do you like or dislike? Maybe those examples will help us focus the discussion here about our HADOOP and APACHE HADOOP trademarks. Best, /Larry Lawrence Rosen Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com) 3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482 Cell: 707-478-8932 Apache Software Foundation, member and counsel (www.apache.org) Open Web Foundation, board member (www.openwebfoundation.org) Stanford University, Instructor in Law Author, Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law (Prentice Hall 2004)
