Re: [Announcement] Fundraiser for "Maemo" Trademark registration
 

Ha ha. My grandfather was a government meat inspector. Me, I worked on HW and SW for voting machines. So I'm a non-voting vegetarian.

Anyway, though . . .

PayPal donations can be sent in a variety of currencies. My account is denominated in USD. Since I need to do a currency conversion anyway, what's better on the receiving end? EUR, I guess? Or is it any less expensive to do the conversion on the receiving end? Either way it takes a cut of the available donation funds. Suggestions, preferences?

For that matter, I can send it in CHF if there's any point in that, although I suspect I'd be needlessly complicating things.

Re: [Announcement] Fundraiser for "Maemo" Trademark registration
 

I don't know about USD accounts but when I was sending my donation to HtheB, I tried both. Using GBP, my nominal currency, PayPal wanted to charge me £0.10. Using EUR, it did not charge me anything. I took a note of the exchange rate and it was the same in both cases. So I went for sending in EUR. The recipient received what PayPal said they would receive, so I assume it did not charge them anything either.

Re: [Announcement] Fundraiser for "Maemo" Trademark registration
 

Do donations to Maemo Community e.V. qualify for tax deduction?

Re: [Announcement] Fundraiser for "Maemo" Trademark registration
 

Not yet :(. Bylaws (basically §2 Purpose AND §3 Altruism of the Articles of Association) already qualifies for tax exemption, but this needs to be requested seperately from the registration. This would also qualify for a "charitable" paypal status with reduced fees. Afaik, Chemist is after it.

Re: [Announcement] Fundraiser for "Maemo" Trademark registration
 

Please correct me where I'm wrong:

Maemo TM was needed by Nokia, purchased by Nokia, given to the community because they decided to drop maemo and there was community, mini-PR.
Community has the TM for years, does nothing with it (we're not marketing any maemo products, so TRADE-mark is useless, but we have it hey), it needs rebuying, since we have it ppl drop money, but why? Nokia did not want to spend those 2k euro as it is useless when not selling any product. Why would community buy this? Hey we had this, we surely need it, right? We never used it. We have no use for it in the future. You can print maemo logo shirts anytime you want, logo is not trade-mark.
Can we instead spend it on infra? This at least has impact on our usage of this site and any other repos etc. Trademark is just buying Nokia cr*p that Nokia didn't need and 'gave' us. Unless we plan to release maemo device, then sure, lets keep it and spend money on it


Please feel free to point where this went wrong

Re: [Announcement] Fundraiser for "Maemo" Trademark registration
 

I'm afraid you are wrong there szopin...
the maemo trademark includes logos...

http://maemo.org/legal/terms_of_use/trademarks/logos/
http://maemo.org/legal/terms_of_use/trademarks/
https://wiki.maemo.org/Talk:Task:Maemo_brand
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark

"The essential function of a trademark is to exclusively identify the commercial source or origin of products or services, so a trademark, properly called, indicates source or serves as a badge of origin. In other words, trademarks serve to identify a particular business as the source of goods or services."

"A trademark is typically a name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, image, or a combination of these elements"

"The owner of a trademark may pursue legal action against trademark infringement."

and lastly ..
"The unauthorized usage of trademarks by producing and trading counterfeit consumer goods is known as brand piracy"

So once we aren't the legal holders of the trademark...
there is only the other side of that fence...
making us brand pirates if we utilize in any way what is no longer ours by legal right to use.

the trademark essentially covers a vast area...
not just a logo or a picture or two.
it covers "the brand" essentially.
that is what we would be dropping.
all rights to what we think of ourselves here.

Sure ...I agree infra is important.
It's like saying .."the car needs maintaining so I can get to work every day..."
that is ....
until something like this pops up...
and then it's more akin to "having" to do "something" or you are giving god-knows-who the legal right to come and graffiti the house, damage your property, ruin your reputation, steal your dog and cat (or logos in this instance) and set fire to your garden and lawn...because you gave away the right to legal protection and allowed literally anyone to "purchase" your right to legal protection.

And no ...
you wouldn't ...
I wouldn't ...
no one could use the logos...the brand...
anything pertaining to the trademark...
at all...
except the new legal holder of the trademark could .

It means that ...oh yes ...you "could" make for yourself ..
hell you could do whatever you want...
start defying the new legal trademark owner ....
make aalllll kinds of stuff pertaining to the maemo brand...the maemo trademark...
t-shirts...flyers, posters, leaflets, buttons, stationary, business cards, merchandise utilize the maemo catch-phrases...
do it all ...and sell it.....

But I'll tell you now...
if we let the trademark lapse and a nightmare picks it up... ...
even if you only make stuff or do or say stuff pertaining to yourself...
-if you are caught infringing on the trademark in any way...walking down the street with an unauthorized "maemo" t-shirt on...you're done. Whatever it is... can be seized and you told to stop...let alone the possibility of court action and being sued.
-if you are caught selling unauthorized maemo brand merchandise...
you are done..Yet again same possible results...
-fact is..the new holder of the trademark could also press the community here to strip every mention of the trademarked name "maemo" from here...and that could be just the beginning...

So I think it goes a little further than ..
"spending money on something that never did anything for us considering it's just something no one ever cared about in the 1st place" ..

rather put it in the context it really is...

"What good does having the entirety of our brand trademarked for our protection from infringement ..under the law...do us?
It's been peaceful and quiet?
Why do we need to fork out monies to prevent the possibility others may try to do an unfair battle with us the legal trademark holders?
Why do we need the bloody useless thing for... everything is good the way it is ...right?
And of course that must continue when we have no legal recourse ...right?"

That sounds a little more ominous when throwing in the fact ...everything is fine and quiet...as long as we have the legal right to being left in peace ...
It may seem it...but I'm not fear-mongering here.
Let the trademark lapse and just wait and watch the poo-tsunami hit

Re: [Announcement] Fundraiser for "Maemo" Trademark registration
 

That's not entirely true, as this is community logo, Nokia never had this, from your first link:
Here is the new logo of the Maemo community. Please be sure to use the logo in context of the Maemo community and not in context of Maemo, the software platform that powers Nokia devices such as the Nokia N810.

Unless maemo community trademarked its logo and not got this as a leftover from Nokia. (but community logo is under copyright anyway, someone created the design, so you don't need to go and register for 2k euro just to use, same as if you created a comic, you're covered).

btw tradermark policy doc references (www.maemo.org/intro/trademarks/logos ) which 404s

It looks like we already are overdue in US (someone mentioned it lapsed there), poo-tsunami did not happen. What exactly will happen, sorry to call it fear-mongering, but will... I don't know, Xiaomi register that TM and release Maemo-android phone? (that actually does sound scary/nasty) This website is safe (been in use for far longer than whoever will register TM). And it's not like in the southpark episode that people ran out of company names, so if they release a product called maemo (I don't know, inflatable duck for example), don't see how that hurts Maemo as a platform

Re: [Announcement] Fundraiser for "Maemo" Trademark registration
 

Very good question by szopin.
And an even better comprehensal answer.

Only thing to clarify is how wide community would like to spread the safety of TM renewal.
For sure we should buy the EU renewal to be safe for running the e.V. and the servers/domains in Europe.
I agree it is questionable to renew world-wide but we already limited to mentioned countries.

It is not we want to sue anyone using the TM. But more like hindering them as a first counter step, as they would need to break the law ( which for sure in a few ciuntries will not stop them ;)).
And as a counter measure for getting sued!

So it is up to the community (and their wallets) to decide.
I am in.

I hope endsormeans and my post help you to decide.
But keep on asking questions, discussing or give information...

Re: [Announcement] Fundraiser for "Maemo" Trademark registration
 

Going further (through the wiki page), it looks like we will go from maemo® to maemo™ (from registered to unregistered).

So we can actually sue/pursue legal action even with unregistered trademark, since we've been using it for a decade, we should be fine

Nokia had commercial interest in maemo® so they registered the trademark as they were providing services/products. We as community around the platform don't seem to have a commercial interest, looks like we will be just giving money to lawyers (which we still can do with unregistered trademark if we want)

and going even further (this part is interesting):
So if there is a chinese toy inflatable duck called maemo, we're screwed, we haven't been actively enforcing and looking for people to sue, so probably getting them to court now will be considered untimely (and again, we can do this even with unregistered trademark in US/Canada...). We have the maemo® repositories running, so we most likely actively are using the trademark at least (I hope this counts, we haven't released any maemo products in a while).

Ok, after the wiki read, it really looks like a relic from the times maemo was planned as a commercial product/service by Nokia and to protect that. Still don't see how we will suddenly be sued by tradermark trolls (we're not cybersquatting, if they take us to court with unregistered trademark that's been in use for a decade we still have better legal grounds). We could use that money if not for the infra/car, maybe for code audit once task force reverse engineers the whole codebase? Plenty of other ways to spend that money in a meaningful way for the community, and not giving it out to lawyers/beaurocrats

Re: [Announcement] Fundraiser for "Maemo" Trademark registration
 

Well, this donation request is for TM renewal.
As I stated in my first post, you may detail your donation so that if we cannot use your funds for the TM registration we can refund it to you.

Similarily, you can donate to "General Maemo infra maintanance" for example, prohibiting your donation to be used for TM renewal.
Or any other cause you'd like to support.

Just remember to add that bit of information to your donation, we will honor your request of course!