maemo.org - Talk - [Announcement] Fundraiser for "Maemo" Trademark registration

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- - [Announcement] Fundraiser for "Maemo" Trademark registration (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=95679)

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by juiceme (Post 1476268)

Here's the donation state as of today:

Code:

mysql> 

mysql> select date, account, total_amount, currency from all_donations order by date;

+------------+---------------+--------------+----------+

| date       | account       | total_amount | currency |

+------------+---------------+--------------+----------+

| 2015-07-01 | PayPal        |         9.46 | EUR      |

| 2015-07-01 | Deutsche Bank |        26.82 | EUR      |

| 2015-07-01 | PayPal        |           15 | EUR      |

| 2015-07-01 | PayPal        |           10 | EUR      |

| 2015-07-01 | PayPal        |           10 | EUR      |

| 2015-07-02 | PayPal        |        19.27 | EUR      |

| 2015-07-02 | PayPal        |        47.05 | EUR      |

| 2015-07-02 | Deutsche Bank |          100 | EUR      |

| 2015-07-03 | PayPal        |           25 | EUR      |

| 2015-07-03 | Deutsche Bank |           50 | EUR      |

| 2015-07-03 | Deutsche Bank |          100 | EUR      |

| 2015-07-04 | PayPal        |           20 | EUR      |

| 2015-07-05 | PayPal        |           20 | EUR      |

| 2015-07-06 | PayPal        |          150 | EUR      |

| 2015-07-06 | Deutsche Bank |           50 | EUR      |

| 2015-07-07 | PayPal        |           20 | EUR      |

| 2015-07-07 | PayPal        |           25 | EUR      |

| 2015-07-08 | PayPal        |           20 | CAD      |

| 2015-07-08 | PayPal        |         95.9 | GBP      |

| 2015-07-08 | Deutsche Bank |           20 | EUR      |

| 2015-07-08 | Deutsche Bank |          200 | EUR      |

+------------+---------------+--------------+----------+

21 rows in set (0.00 sec)



mysql> select sum(total_amount * exchange_rate) as calculated from all_donations;

+--------------------+

| calculated         |

+--------------------+

| 1061.6399999863002 |

+--------------------+

1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Just because of cmdline use I sent my part :)

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

My bank account currently: $27.22 fml
(That's after getting paid, getting out of the red, and making some payments)

My shares coming, just delayed :(

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kangal (Post 1476281)

My bank account currently: $27.22 fml
(That's after getting paid, getting out of the red, and making some payments)

My shares coming, just delayed :(

Be happy, I'm currently - €700 Red...

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

@Kangal, @HtheB

Please don't push it. If the time comes when payment is needed and something is missing others (including me) will take care of it.

Not meaning to sound arrogant or anything. But there are many things in life much more important than a trademark!

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

Thought would abandon this thread, but seeing people chip in through tears and blood, there are better fights to fight, come on guys

Quote:

Originally Posted by woody14619 (Post 1476256)

Sorry, but that's not how that works. There's no guarantee that we'll get $250K for anything. The real worst case is our trademarks expire, we fail to renew at all, and a company (like MS) comes along claiming they own the mark and/or want the domain, demanding we cease and desist, filing legal paperwork against us. At which point we have two options:

MS, really? MS is currently spending quite a lot of effort to look open source friendly would be a shot in their own foot and from what I've heard they dropped Elop, so how?

Quote:

Ask for compensation and hope they're feeling generous, then "move" and change the name/scheme/skin/logos. (Your $250K option, assuming they'll go for that.)
Spend a boat load of money we don't have to fight it in court, hoping to win a counter suit and break even.

The really really worst case scenario is we rename the URL. But that will not happen, even with half-drunk court assigned lawyer this will not happen. There are plenty of examples of domain squatters going around until this day, because they were there first. We are not even squatters, we have our product/project, we keep it alive, with unregistered trademark. No chance in hell that scenario would happen. Still no point in wasting money on dead platform. We could become talk.mer.org and remain happily after (maemo logo is again copyright issue, trademark has nothing to do with it).

Quote:

Note that in the $250K case, we would "win", but at the same time would lose the right to the domain and/or continuing to do what we're doing here for all intents and purposes.

We could invest that in Neo900 development and make that project bigger, less pricey, more inviting to new members (vote would be needed, if neo900 is not in maemo(tm) (<- we need to use that trademark guise, registration and abandonment = waste of money) spirit we can spend quarter of a million on something community decides, again, he got 250k just for website name he didn't use and had no business, totally different scenario.

Quote:

By spending some funds now to renew the minimal set in just the EU (or even just Germany), if a company comes along later, we get to:

Force the venue in which the legal battle is fought to a place we have actual people on the ground (eg Germany).
Have a very minimal cost for defense, since with an active TM it's an open/closed case that almost any lawyer would take it on for free, and counter sue for their expenses.

I'd be willing to bet that a large chunk of that $250K "settlement" went toward legal expenses, since there were international court filings and such months before that agreement was reached. The guy involved probably walked away with very little in his pocket from this, instead being happy to not be in a crater of debt after initially holding out against a company with big pockets.

But hey, you believe what you want and I'll believe what I want. I'm good with pitching in some funds for what amounts to a 10 year insurance policy. If you're not, that's your call. If we get enough in time, hopefully, it will happen. If not, well, that will probably go into the kitty and hopefully be used to ward off lawyers later if needed. :)

Sounds like those insurance scams: we will protect you in case patent trolls turn to trademark trolling, just spend couple k with us and you have insurance.
Wiki page makes it pretty obvious that without actual enforcing and looking for offenders we might already be screwed. If the duck company from china comes to europe they will argue we did not do due diligence.

I applaud all your commitment to community, but before someone takes a loan to buy this 'really needed thing, because monsters', please don't, going to chip in a tenner later for the TM, just so you don't have to, really worst case scenario (again improbable if not impossible, find another such case, did webos got trademark mugged?) is we go from TMO to TMO with Mer replacing dead maemo

edit: to put it more in perspective, was there any example of trademark trolling, like Marvel (or DC? not sure) harassing adobe for Flash? Was there any fan-forum discussing flash (gordon) with flash in URL taken to court by adobe? Will that page listing winds also suffer from 'new maemo', they list harmattan and fremantle and gregale and... From wiki:

Quote:

Cybersquatting (also known as domain squatting), according to the United States federal law known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, is registering, trafficking in, or using an Internet domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.

Bad faith is key, there is no way in hell anyone registering TM 'maemo' today can prove (even suggesting that seems silly) bad faith. Maemo is historical artifact by now, so sorry, not buying this 'we will get taken to court and will have to spend hundreds of thousands', beyond absurd. Why has noone registered C64 by now? Thousands of sites with c64 in the name and usage. Maemo will fall prey, come on

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by reinob (Post 1476313)

This is why I love this community :)

Well, I am voluntarily moderator, it's the least that I can do (at the moment).

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

added a bit under edit, srsly, how come noone registered c64 by now to collect that sweet sweet extortion money from all fan sites, there are 100s more than maemo, anyone?

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

I find it incredible...
really...
the importance of maintaining our home here some believe to be simply about maintaining the infrastructure or funding whatever...or stopping technoligical attacks on us here.
But the moment the potential for real legal trouble which can seriously cost us which could affordably be avoided...it's a waste of money?
Citing .."why would anyone bother with us?" wow ..that is a low estimation of our value in the greater scheme of things.

Also ...patent trolls becoming trademark trolls?...
they don't have to be the same beast...
and they aren't trademark trolls...they are proficient entities very accomplished at what they do...and they aren't trolls ...they're corporate sharks hunting ..this isn't fear mongering either...they've been doing it a long time and they don't just hunt smaller fish ..they hunt each other...

http://fashionista.com/2015/02/frenc...s-paris-france

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tech/new...pi4CLjIrjYwW0O

http://www.forbes.com/sites/montebur...-infringement/

these are just a couple big ones I remember...

Why would anyone bother with us?
think of every possible good thing about maemo and what it projects...represents...
and that there is a valuable marketable commodity which is completely.. understandably... covetable .
More so than a complete nonentity getting raked over the coals in a trademark infringement suit

These cases and many many more aren't fear mongering...
they are there in black and white..
.in print.
and most certainly should not be dismissed, waved away as not possible or probable or a waste of monies.
It has as much validity in the necessity of our security as anything else needing attention.

I am not bashing at any who do not wish to safeguard our brand.
Fact is...I respect any here for their decisions and reasons to fund whatever..and believe many things should get funded..

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

Lets spend the money on re-registering amiga trademark, we can fund Nokia's comeback with all the money from amiga fan sites, if only someone can really show how that works instead of fud

ends: did you read those links? gucci vs guess lol, sky - our case, older than skydrive, skydrive trademark trolling lost, not sure what Nike and their slogan has to the discussion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehouse.com - 10 years in the making, even potus failed
vatican.org - not even god helps
Cool listing https://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Inter..._Domain_Names/

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by szopin (Post 1476325)

......

Reading your words, it seems to be clear that you really think that a community like this could live forever without money because there is no need to pay for registrations, hosting, connectivity, energy and so on...

If next month someone will ask some donation for the energy bill, would you still call this action "scare with monsters"?

Then, remember we all know that the future is uncertain...but despite this, every volunteer here involved in maintenance tasks of any level tries to keep things running trying to predict some of tomorrow's problems.
No one wants scare with this.
But we should reflect about what could happen since we have no hidden weapons under the hood.

If you think that a TM is not a good reason for a donation, feel free to give something for whatever you like of this community that is not receiving money since a lot of time.