[copyleft-next] copyleft-next 0.2.0 released

Pamela Chestek pchestek at gmail.com
Thu Feb 21 14:07:50 UTC 2013


On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 12:40 AM, Richard Fontana
<fontana at sharpeleven.org>wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 01:35:44PM +0000, Gervase Markham wrote:
> > Some licensing documents disclaim e.g. the application of the United
> > Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. Do
> > they have good reason to do so,
>
> I don't actually know. I confess that as far as I can recall I've
> never looked at that Convention. The most coherent argument I have
> heard from a lawyer on this point was something to the following
> effect: 'no one really knows what's in that Convention, or whether it
> applies to software, but whatever is in it might be bad' (paraphrasing
> heavily of course). I think the main reason we see this being excluded
> is because someone initially decided to do so and this started a
> process in which lawyers drafting licensing agreements all followed
> suit.
>

FWIW, that's my understanding too.  But we may have gotten our
understanding from the same person. :-)

>
>
> > * "or "powered by" statements"
> >
> > Is this too specific, or are we hoping a judge would understand this as
> > referring to a class of statements? E.g. if there was a "FooBar Inside"
> > statement instead of "Powered by FooBar"...
>
> This is just a clarification of what kinds of things absolutely are
> not 'Legal Notices'. It isn't meant to be exhaustive, but I did
> recently add 'Powered by statements' because that is such a common
> form in which I've seen the problematic condition.
>

When Gerv raised this, I wondered why the word "trademarks" isn't in there.
When I suggested adding "trademark legends" I'm SURE I had a good reason
not to add "trademarks," but for the life of me I can't figure it out now.
Maybe I was thinking about the case where a name is also a trademark, so in
the copyright notice the company name would also be trademark? But that
seems a silly thing to worry might get misinterpreted.

So if no one else can think of a good reason not to say "trademark,"
doesn't it make sense to say "but does not include logos, other graphical
images, _trademarks or_ trademark legends[, or "powered by" statements]."
That will take care of all the "powered by," "built on," "inside"
statements.

Pam
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