Using the TWiki Trademark

TWiki® is a registered trademark of TWiki founder Peter Thoeny, TWIKI.NET. The TWiki logo and the "Collaborate with TWiki" tagline are trademarks of Peter Thoeny. The TWiki logo is Copyright 2005 by PeterThoeny, ArthurClemens and TWikiContributors.

Note: This topic is for the discussion of the TWiki Trademark. The trademark holder and the community is currently working out a set of rules that describe how the trademark may be used, what licenses exist for it's use, and what attribution is required.

The goal is to create a legally binding policy or license, hopefully in as lightweight a fashion as possible (e.g., no signatures etc.), that:

1. allows active community members to freely use the TWiki brand for commercial and non-commercial purposes.
2. the license will be perpetual, without royalty, not subject to revocation, etc.
3. fair attribution is required when the TWiki brand is used. Specifically, "TWiki® is a registered trademark of TWiki founder Peter Thoeny, TWIKI.NET." The company name needs to link to http://www.twiki.net in online media.

-- Contributors: PeterThoeny - 08 Sep 2008

History of trademark attribution on TWiki.org

A closer look on how trademark attribution was handled on TWiki.org (see TWiki, TWikiSite, TWikiLogos) in the past shows the following:

• initial attribution:
  "TWiki™ is a trademark of Peter Thoeny"
• 23 Nov 2005 (SVN 7607):
  "TWiki™, the TWiki logo and the "Collaborate with TWiki" tagline are trademarks of Peter Thoeny"
• 08 Jul 2008 (SVN 16989):
  "TWiki^® is a registered trademarks of TWiki founder Peter Thoeny, TWIKI.NET. The TWiki logo and the "Collaborate with TWiki" tagline are trademarks of Peter Thoeny."

Discussion

As I mentioned in TWikiGovernanceConsolidated, TWiki trademark is registered to Peter Thoeny (INDIVIDUAL), and that must be acknowledged. I don't see why there must be a mention and a link to TWiki.NET in the trademark acknowledgement, though.

-- RafaelAlvarez - 08 Sep 2008

Regarding 3.) Attribution to Peter as the founder of TWiki and as the owner of the trademark is very ok. But linking to a commercial entity when writing of the open source project TWiki is simply not acceptable. This situation would be even more worse than it is today!

It has to be clear that TWiki.org \x{2260} TWIKI.NET. There is already too much mixed up between those both especially on TWiki.org, which has to cleaned up anyway.

Therefore I would suggest the following (optional with(out) TWiki.org) :

• "TWiki® is a registered trademark of TWiki founder Peter Thoeny, TWiki.org."

-- AndreUlrich - 08 Sep 2008

Do be constructive - what about a mixture?

• "TWiki® is a registered trademark of TWiki founder Peter Thoeny, CTO of TWIKI.NET"

Linking to TWikiDotNet without linking to TDO in online media is nothing but a joke (clarification: if there's no other linkt to TDO before the trademark get's mentioned). Otherwise, the only intention of such a text would be to fool people by making them believe that .org and .net are the same in order to generate business for TWikiDotNet.

-- CarloSchulz - 08 Sep 2008

@Carlo: resolving the "too mixed up situation" by a mixup?

Better we would keep it simple and straight to the fact:

• "TWiki® is a registered trademark of TWiki founder Peter Thoeny"

-- AndreUlrich - 08 Sep 2008

yes, mixed x mixed == unmixed!

-- CarloSchulz - 08 Sep 2008

Linking to TWikiDotNet while linking to TDO in online media is also a joke, as it sends the message "TWiki == TWiki.NET"

-- RafaelAlvarez - 08 Sep 2008

Peter and TWiki.net has now given the community a clear license to use the name TWiki. Only condition being a quite common and normal "fair attribution".

The tradition for "fair attribution" is a discrete notice when it makes sense. Example is that in a TWiki zip the attribution will have to be on one single topic (TWiki/WebHome). The TWiki logos on top bar and bottom bar on all pages all point to TWiki.org. It cannot cause much confusion that one small link - that says TWiki.net - on one page in an entire TWiki installation points to TWiki.net.

Another example: In a book about TWiki a fair attribution is traditionally on one page where you also state the copyright, year of print etc. On a T-shirt or cap with just the logo you would not find it fair having to add an attribution other than the (R)

If you have for example a plugin that uses the TWiki logo and the TWiki name the only requirement is some small and almost unnoticeable text on one page that states the attribution. We can still let the TWiki name and a large TWiki logo link to Twiki.org like we always did. Same with the small TWiki logo at the lower right of the footer in the TWiki web. It can link to twiki.org. So there should be no big confusion.

If we had forked the project we would have a huge cost of building up a new brand. Now we can all continue to benefit from a strong brand TWiki and the community have a clear license for its use. Please let us accept the modest price giving the brand owner a little attention to his business - which most will hardly notice anyway. Who ever reads the small brand name attributions anyway??

I think we have a very fair deal and I think the fuzz is mainly due to a little misunderstanding of what a "fair attribution" means.

-- KennethLavrsen - 08 Sep 2008

Funny thing, reading online media I only had press releases in mind. For instance a press release on non-twiki.org sites where there is no other link than the one in the trademark section - and that would be a no go.

-- CarloSchulz - 08 Sep 2008

I guess we have to make sure that twiki.org releases always contains a good encouragement to go to http://twiki.org (note the full URL). A press release is normally clear text and then we do not have to worry about the linking the TWiki.net string. We simply cannot.

-- KennethLavrsen - 08 Sep 2008

I agree with Kenneth about the limited scope of fair attribution actually entails, and Carlo is correct that it would also appear on any press releases. The issue of online linking is irrelevant—the text itself has grammatical and technical issues.

The U.S. Trademark office lists Owner (REGISTRANT) Thoeny, Peter INDIVIDUAL SWITZERLAND as the owner of the TWiki trademark. Unless Twiki.net is the trademark holder, reference to it in the attribution is incorrect. It implies a connection (between the trademark and the company) where none exists and will only confuse readers by making them believe that 1) TWiki IS Twiki.net and 2) TWiki.net is the trademark holder for the TWiki name.

For clarity, the attribution should probably read, "TWiki® is a registered trademark of TWiki founder, Peter Thoeny. The TWiki logo and 'Collaborate with TWiki' are trademarks of Peter Thoeny. The TWiki logo is copyright 2005 by Peter Thoeny, Arthur Clemens and TWikiContributors."

In a press release that also mentions TWiki.net, there would be a separate attribution along the lines of, "TWiki.net, the TWiki.net logo and 'The Enterprise Wiki' are trademarks of TWiki.net."

-- DavidWolfe - 08 Sep 2008

Let us get the facts straight here.

• It is Peter Thoeny that owns the brand name TWiki because he founded the project and gave it its original name. It has later been registered for better protection.
• Peter Thoeny has founded TWiki.net. He owns part of TWiki.net and he works all day in TWiki.net. And naturally TWiki.net has been granted the right to the name TWiki also through some legal arrangement that it unimportant. So there is nothing strange in the attribution. There is legal link between Peter and TWiki.net and Peter's interest in the attribution is naturally to attract business to his company. The purpose of the attribution is to attract business.

Let us make this a win-win. It is Peter and his company that has granted us the license we asked for. We have gotten all we asked for. The exact attribution text is and should be Peter's decision. As long as we only have to give a standard small almost invisible fair attribution I cannot see why we cannot let this one end up as a "Win-Win" for both the community and for Peter.

-- KennethLavrsen - 09 Sep 2008

I think there are more than 3 community members that are simply saying they do not consider the proposal as a win-win for either party.

The statement will only confuse readers by making them believe that TWiki IS Twiki.net I think is a telling one. (others outside the community have said similar)

it is important for the reputation of an open source project to project an image of independence. Once a project appears to be 'commercial open source' rather than open source with commercial companies working on it, potential users become much more wary.

As was talked about at the summit on other issues - its quite plausible that this effect has not been considered or talked though enough.

-- SvenDowideit - 09 Sep 2008

It is not my intention to divide. My desire is that the TWiki project continue to grow and that commercial entities using TWiki make a lot more money. Both are important if the TWiki platform is to succeed, which I need for my own TWiki to continue to get better. In InterimGovernanceTeamAgenda, feedback is solicited for several ongoing discussions. So here's my feedback. I tend to not want to get involved in ongoing debates. Rather, I like to make my thoughts known, then get out of the way and let those closer to the issues decide.

In TWikiGovernanceConsolidated, Peter says

"On the trademark question, it has always been my goal to protect the trademark for the community. That is the reason why at the time of founding TWIKI.NET I negotiated to retain the trademark ownership. Do a trademark search on the uspto.gov website and you will see. Technically I own the TWiki trademark, but with all economic benefit from the use of the trademark assigned over to TWIKI.NET. As a silly example, if I sell a TWiki T-shirt and make a profit of $5.00 I am required to give the gain to the company (this does not apply to other community members.)"

This seems to reflect a decision and arrangement made between Peter and TWiki.net that Peter cannot—personally or via another entity—make money off the TWiki name. It has no impact on the TWiki Project and implies no change in the ownership of or attribution of the TWiki trademark. Peter himself is saying that he intentionally retained ownership of the trademark in order to protect it for the Community. Just because Peter agreed to restrict his own financial gain does not mean that it's correct to identify TWiki.net as the owner of the trademark—they are not.

Fair attribution should be made wherever appropriate. Nobody questions that. But that attribution has to be accurate. Otherwise it is confusing, misleading (possibly even deceptive), and potentially unethical.

-- DavidWolfe - 09 Sep 2008

I would not mind if the online distribution linked to any page that describe who Peter Thoeny is. For example:

TWiki® is a registered trademark of TWiki founder Peter Thoeny, (linking to his TDO page)

I think that a good option would be for TWiki.NET to give Peter a "personal" blog under the twiki.net domain, that basically says "I'm Peter Thoeny, I founded the TWiki Open Source project some years ago, and currently I am the CTO of TWIKI.NET". Then we can link to that page in the attribution. Another option is for him to make his TDO page more "TWiki.NET oriented", and attribution may just go there.

That way the attribution has absolutely no implication between TDO and TWiki.NET, but those that click the link can be steered towards TWIKI.NET.

I think that is a good compromise.

-- RafaelAlvarez - 09 Sep 2008

I like that idea.

-- CarloSchulz - 09 Sep 2008

From a business point of view this won't work.

But nowhere is written the attribution line should be the only line in the text. Nothing prevents us from writing:

TWiki is an independent Open Source project at twiki.org

TWiki® is a registered trademark of TWiki founder Peter Thoeny, TWIKI.NET

-- ArthurClemens - 09 Sep 2008

I still think that it is unfair competition (and free publicity) to have a direct link to TWIKI.NET in the trademark attribution.

-- RafaelAlvarez - 09 Sep 2008

I believe DavidWolfe's analysis to be very salient: Just because Peter agreed to restrict his own financial gain does not mean that it is correct to identify TWiki.net as the owner of the trademark—they are not. Hence, it would be unfair competition and a source of confusion to have a direct link to TWIKI.NET in the trademark attribution.

-- KeithHelfrich - 10 Sep 2008

Its also worth re-reading some of the discussion on GuideLinesSponsorPresenceOnTWikiDotOrg - many others would like to avoid twiki.org and the twiki open source project from devolving into a commercial circus.

-- SvenDowideit - 10 Sep 2008

DavidWolfe:
> Unless Twiki.net is the trademark holder, reference to it in the attribution is incorrect.

This pretty much says it all.

I do see a continued problem in:

TWiki® is a registered trademark of TWiki founder Peter Thoeny, TWIKI.NET

as it deludes the TWiki brand. Please, let's keep it simple:

TWiki® is a registered trademark of TWiki founder Peter Thoeny

because that's what it is. The trademark license that Peter granted to TWikiDotNet is out of scope here, no matter how special it is.

-- MichaelDaum - 11 Sep 2008

It would be nice to have a TWIKI.NET representative to comment.

Which is the next action here?

I won't dare to change the text in this topic as it was one of the conditions that TWIKI.NET requested in exchange for the "consessions" they did regarding TWiki.

-- RafaelAlvarez - 11 Sep 2008

May I add the observation that 'online media' doesn't mean just the twiki.org distribution etc..? It also means pages like:

http://www.siteground.com/twiki-hosting.htm

They currently link to twiki.org, correct! But under the new rules, they have to link to twiki.net too.

Consider also pages like http://www.wikimatrix.org/show/TWiki, where there now even is a link to twiki.net. Why it is there, i don't know. I assume it is based on some community decision. I think it is wrong.

I remember there are companies offering vmware-based twiki installations and such too (before twiki.net started doing the same). They should now thus link to twiki.net, their direct competitor?

TWiki.net should have no special privilege regarding being linked to, in my humble opinion. If I am forced to link to twiki.net on http://www.sonologic.nl/Hosting/WikiHosting for example, I will simply remove twiki from the list of example wiki's.

Can someone explain to me why twiki.net is special in regard to being linked to?? Sure, they want to boost their google ranking, so does any other commercial entity that is related to twiki, some which deserve it way more than twiki.net imho.

-- KoenMartens - 15 Sep 2008

The attribution subtly changed from PeterThoeny on 07 Jul 2008 r170 < r169. MichaelDaum commented on that checkin without ever getting an answer from PeterThoeny. Peter changed it at a time were the community were busily fighting a similar issue: TWIKI.NETs download link on TWiki.org (see GuideLinesLinkingThirdPartyDistributions), which took about a week and a lot of pressure from the community in order to remove it.

Changing the trademark attribution in that way was not very sensible either and maybe not even recocnized by the community. Question is, if we can tolerate to use the open-source project TWiki.org as a marketing platform for TWIKI.NET? At the moment it seems like TWiki.org is driven by a commercial entity named TWIKI.NET!

-- AndreUlrich - 15 Sep 2008

"Why it is there, i don't know. I assume it is based on some community decision."

Don't know. Can't remember any discussion/decision about this. I don't even know who's responsible for TWiki in the wikimatrix but I gues it's Peter which would perfectly explain the link to .net (which I totally agree shouldn't be there).

-- CarloSchulz - 15 Sep 2008

Wikimatrix: Go and change it guys. It needs to be updated to the latest version anyway.

-- KennethLavrsen - 15 Sep 2008

How do I change it? AFAIK, we need to send an email to the wikimatrix team to have some fields changed.

I sent them an email, and I'm waiting for their response.

-- RafaelAlvarez - 15 Sep 2008

Hm ... I would have hoped, that Peter would sort out all these discussions after the summit. I thought, that the setting was clarified and that he agreed to let TWiki be a free, independent open source project. That is a prerequisite for further growth. Yet I do not see him in the course of this discussion to support such a process.

Peter: Act now! This is, what the community expects. Don't haggle!

-- MartinSeibert - 15 Sep 2008

I lied about the email... Due to a network "hiccup" it never got sent. I got lucky.

The record maintainer is PeterThoeny. He must be the one to change it.

OTOH, I think that the maintainer should be someone appointed by the board (InterimGovernanceTeam) or a member of the appropiate TaskTeam (MarketingTaskTeam ?)

-- RafaelAlvarez - 15 Sep 2008

(crossposted from TWikiGovernanceConsolidated) I just realized the kind of poison pill the Trademark attribution being demanded by TWIKI.NET is. If anyone attempts to fork TWiki, by GPL rules they must attribute the original project, and by trademark rules they must put the trademark statement.

"MyOwnFork is a fork of TWiki. TWiki is a registered trademark to Peter Thoeny, TWIKI.NET".

The end result, is that any TWiki fork could end up giving free marketing to TWIKI.NET.

IANAL, so here is the question: If somebody fork (which I don't intend, nor recommend at this point), can he choose to let out the TWIKI.NET from the copyright attribution (which would be legal, anyway)?

-- RafaelAlvarez - 19 Sep 2008

There's a blog post "Commercial Open Source in Europe Verses the US" that to me shows why we have such a large disconnect here. The active TWiki developers and many of the most active TWiki.org people are European (I'm in that camp too)

one example:

Dual licensing business models.

• Europeans see it as Not true open source. Proprietary business models using Open Source for PR and marketing.
• US people think: Widely accepted as the most common Open Source business model.

Obviously, unless there are more big contributions to TWiki by 'US' contributors, TWiki.org should run itself in the 'European' style - which is not going to suite TWIKI.NET.

Raf - wrt TM, last time I looked, you have to acknowledge the TM holder, not write your attribution in the way they 'demand' - but IANAL either - for that I recon TWiki.org should contact the FSF, SPI and the organisation that Ethereral -> WireShark talked to.

-- SvenDowideit - 25 Sep 2008