If I recall correctly, the fair use doctrine for copyrights does not apply in the same way to trademarks. I'm pretty sure there is a fair use provision specifically for trademarks but don't remember what the difference between the two is. If this were a copyright issue it would fall pretty clearly under the fair use doctrine as it is direct criticism of Wikipedia. This might not be the case though for trademarks.
Ok, I broke down and looked it up... on Wikipedia. The fair use provision for trademarks sounds a bit strange. It actually sounds to me like it's intended more for commercial criticism than non-commercial in that the point of it is to allow advertisers to compare products. So if you were running an encyclopedia and you wanted to point out that your encyclopedia is better than Wikipedia, you would be allowed to use their trademark. But how or whether it applies to wikipediaart's use of it seems unclear. On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 8:29 AM, Rob Myers <r...@robmyers.org> wrote: > On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 7:00 PM, Scott Kildall <lu...@kildall.com> wrote: >> >> A few weeks ago, I was sent a letter from the Wikimedia legal counsel >> (they run Wikipedia) which challenged the Wikipedia Art project >> (specifically the domain name, which I was the registrant of) on the >> grounds of trademark infringement since we were using the "Wikipedia" >> name in the project. This is despite the fact that the project is a >> non-commercial commentary of Wikipedia. > > Wow that is fail on their part. > > It's like Barbie in a Blender, only with supposed freedom-lovin' folk > rather than a multinational toy company. > > Is there anything people can do to help? > > - Rob. > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > -- ***************************** Pall Thayer artist http://www.this.is/pallit ***************************** _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
