Re: Possible trademark infringement: Book cover

Lists: spi-general
From: Ben Finney <ben(at)benfinney(dot)id(dot)au>
To: spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
Subject: Possible trademark infringement: Book cover
Date: 2008-03-12 05:12:38
Message-ID: 87pru04jax.fsf@benfinney.id.au
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Howdy folks,

The book "Conspiracy of Shadows: Companion" at Lulu
<URL:http://www.lulu.com/content/144824> prominently displays an image
on the cover that is undoubtedly the Debian swirl logo.

The book appears totally unrelated to Debian, but the logo strongly
indicates otherwise. It appears to me that this an infringement of
Debian's trademark in the logo.

--
\ “In the long run, the utility of all non-Free software |
`\ approaches zero. All non-Free software is a dead end.” —Mark |
_o__) Pilgrim, 2006 |
Ben Finney


From: MJ Ray <mjr(at)phonecoop(dot)coop>
To: spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
Cc: spi-trademark(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
Subject: Re: Possible trademark infringement: Book cover
Date: 2008-03-12 10:04:32
Message-ID: 47d7aab0.GOtEnYQ84lkYuI4S%mjr@phonecoop.coop
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Ben Finney <ben(at)benfinney(dot)id(dot)au> wrote:
> The book "Conspiracy of Shadows: Companion" at Lulu
> <URL:http://www.lulu.com/content/144824> prominently displays an image
> on the cover that is undoubtedly the Debian swirl logo.
>
> The book appears totally unrelated to Debian, but the logo strongly
> indicates otherwise. It appears to me that this an infringement of
> Debian's trademark in the logo.

The half-closed spi-trademark list seems a better venue because it
actually has real lawyer(s) watching it. Resending it there. Replies
to there, please. Outcomes should be reported in the public record in
due course.

The inside of the swirl looks different to me, so it doesn't appear to
be using the actual swirl artwork. The red/black colours and detail
look very similar to me, though. Are game rules a similar field to
operating systems as far as trademarks are concerned?

Regards,
--
MJ Ray http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html tel:+44-844-4437-237 -
Webmaster-developer, statistician, sysadmin, online shop builder,
consumer and workers co-operative member http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ -
Writing on koha, debian, sat TV, Kewstoke http://mjr.towers.org.uk/


From: Julien BLACHE <jb(at)jblache(dot)org>
To: spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
Subject: Re: Possible trademark infringement: Book cover
Date: 2008-03-12 20:04:23
Message-ID: 87fxuvemk8.fsf@sonic.technologeek.org
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Ben Finney <ben(at)benfinney(dot)id(dot)au> wrote:

Hi,

> The book appears totally unrelated to Debian, but the logo strongly
> indicates otherwise. It appears to me that this an infringement of
> Debian's trademark in the logo.

The swirl logo was made out of a standard tool of some image
manipulation program (was it Corel Draw?), mapping a pre-defined
pattern over a swirl path.

I saw this exact same pattern mapped onto a another shape on the
packaging of an accounting software here (I can get scan of that in a
couple weeks if anybody is interested).

Unfortunately, the swirl is 0% original, hence it's not worth a lot as
a trademark.

Hopefully the official logo contains a bit more original work.

JB.

--
Julien BLACHE <http://www.jblache.org>
<jb(at)jblache(dot)org> GPG KeyID 0xF5D65169