Let's say the IRGC, Mossad or NSA is behind that developer of the Notepad++ on Mac clone and would love to use your trademark to push a spyware infected app on to some targets. You don't know them and can't trust them so you don't want them using your name because that would backfire on you.
There's plenty of precedent with this in browser extensions, where once they become popular they end up being sold and bought by some shady Israeli PE or ad-tech company with ties to Mossad. You don't want your name or trademark anywhere near this, if you value it.
Of course I'd prefer for Don Ho to voice his political opinions through more appropriate channels, but it is what it is.
Is there a clear source for this mechanism?
There isn't a clear source (at least that I'm aware of) since this is handled by the legal system with a lot of nuance on a case by case basis. It is very reasonable to be proactive in trademark defense but if you aren't courts may still side with you if the establishment of usage was clear.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/5m9grz/theres_no_...
This is one of the most infuriating misconceptions I see in the wild, made all the more infuriating because it's really freaking simple to understand.
Trademarks can be lost if they are not defended. The name "Super Mario Bros." is a trademark. (There is, however, a very high bar for this happening; it's not trivial to nullify someone's trademark)
Copyright can *not* be lost from being undefended. Copyright is what, for example, video games, characters, and other media fall under. This is where the confusion stems from. People will say that Nintendo must send the legal team after every person who makes a Super Mario Bros. fan project, because otherwise they'll lose the copyright to Super Mario Bros. -- but this is what's categorically untrue. This misconception leads to people giving Nintendo and other corporations a pass for antisocial behaviour, under the mistaken belief that it's their legal obligation to behave like a pit bull when confronted with fans daring to show their passion for their franchises.
I’m not sure if Google has ever done similar but people use google as a verb to mean web search and I’m not sure if they worried about losing brand protection or though of it as an advantage in acquiring users.
The Notepad++ guy wasn't an attack dog here. I'm 100% behind his reasonable position. Just saying, you're not legally obligated to say "no, no one else in the entire world can use it". It's more that you have to say "no one else can use it without my permission." Also just saying, if you want to use someone else's trademark, it's a really, really bad idea to start the conversation by using it without their permission and thereby requiring them to decide right then and there whether they'll allow you to. It's kind of like asking to borrow someone's car versus taking it first and then asking if that was OK.
It's a case of someone putting out candy for halloween and someons running away with the bowl screeming! Well you put i out there!
I hope to see an appology from the author of the fork who's hopefully understanding that what they did is not ok.
No one is mad about the port of Notepad++ to macOS. No one is mad that someone said "I ported Notepad++ to macOS." The problem is the branding and delivery conveys the impression that the macOS port is official, which is deceptive even if deception isn't the goal.
Which was why they felt they had to write this post. Read the article.
After all, Notepad++ is about as different from Notepad as Notepad+² is from Nodepad++.
Linux is GPL'ed and the name Linux is also trademarked. But if I decided to port it to run on a lava lamp, what would be wrong with my calling the project "Linux for Lava Lamp"?
A fork's existence does not obligate the mainline maintainer to maintain the fork, no matter what the name of the fork is. As long as the forked project makes the relationship (or lack of relationship) and support expectations clear, I'm not sure what this battle was about.
No, in the same way the GPL does not specify the user must use their own computer to develop the fork rather than taking the upstream maintainer's laptop home without asking.
The GPL grants no rights whatsoever to use the name, just the code.
Therein lies the rub. By not honouring the trademark, the fork made the association of service, support, otherwise to Notepad++ making it seem like it was officially supported.
Imagine if someone who used the fork attempt to get support on a product that wasn't supported and, when faced with limited responsiveness, etc. decided to denigrate the original developer by lambasting them on HackerNews, et al. The reputational damage alone would be seen as a reason to defend the mark.
I work with a very large OSS nonprofit who has trademarks in most of the geos around the world and vigourously defends them for precisely this reason: reputational damage undercuts the community, the developers, and the reason for existence.
How many forks do you know which have the same name as the original.
Imagine the confusion if Firefox is compatible with some feature but Firefox and Firefox aren’t.
Imagine who gets angry emails if the MacOS port does any damage and people google for the author of Notepad++
Just look what the author of curl get because people found curl somewhere and googled his name or found it in the source
- GPL is defines copyright permissions for the software code: copying, modifying, and redistributing.
- Trademark protection controls use of a name, logo, slogan, or branding.
“Notepad++” is a protected trademark, so a fork is allowed to use the GPL-covered source code any way it wants, but it can not use the trademark Notepad++ in a way that suggests it is the original project or is endorsed by it.
It would be like someone forking GnuCash from GPL code and calling then it "Quicken for Linux." The source code can be forked, but the Intuit trademark prevents someone from using the name Quicken because it could confuse users.
So you can fork all you want, but he can legally prevent you from calling it "Linux".
This is what it’s about: the forked project was NOT clear about the relationship to the original.
You can do this not because Linux is GPL, but because Linus Torvalds has authorized certain uses of this trademark in some form; I could not find specific information for Linux, but the Linux Foundation provides reference: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/brand-guidelines
GPL and other licenses allow you all sorts of leeway with the code but not the name and branding of the product the code is running.
Personally I think NextPad would’ve been a perfectly acceptable (and subjectively better) name
"The code is open to forking, but we need to enforce our trademarks because otherwise anyone can upload malware claiming to be Notepad++" is a real, legitimate concern and not some kind of ghastly imposition, but I think whoever sent that email didn't even bother thinking about that. They just saw somebody defending IP rights and went straight into attack mode, because that's what a lot of online communities have trained people to do reflexively.
brian_herman•1h ago