Why does a company in one country care about what a court says in another country?
Perhaps because of a treaty where the countries mutually recognize the decisions of the courts of the other country. Where no treaty exists, there may be common law that allows enforcement of the judgements of a court in another country, depending on the circumstances. In that case, a first court action (US) would be completed, with a decision and perhaps an award of damages. If the infringer decided to ignore the US court order to pay, another court action could be brought in UK as a contract matter, and the infringer might be ordered to pay. That common law, contract matter may have well known exemptions. Perhaps only judgements for real damages will be supported by the local court, but punitive damages will be ignored. Perhaps sentencing judgements for the death penalty will not be recognized. Details will differ by the jurisdictions and other legal details involved. Why does a US trade mark make any difference to a company in UK? Trade marks are jurisdictional. If there are consumers in the jurisdiction, then the trade mark may come into play. So if you have a US trade mark on your web site, and your web site has users in USA, the US trade mark might become a matter to concern yourself with. Again. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not your lawyer. You should talk to your lawyer if you really care about the details of a real legal matter. This is background information not related to any specific legal matter. On this specific matter, OSMF will be taking advice from their lawyers, because taking legal advice from a thread on the internet can be a long, drawn out, exercise. :-) What if the C&D related to all geodata in a country, rather than a trade mark? Simon's original post said, "Both the use of the term “geocode” and the use of the Google API are merely incidental to us. Doing without them does not in any way impact the core goals or operation of OSM." I presume that OSMF would react differently for a matter that does "impact the core goals or operation of OSM". But "all geodata" for a country is not the issue at hand. How much "what if" do we want to play, here? :-)
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