Re: Please comment on trademark guidelines

On Tue, 2009-09-29 at 08:45 +0100, Dave Page wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 10:28 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 10:26 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> >> Advocacy geeks,
> >>
> >> Based on requests for clarification from vendors, Dave Page crafted this
> >> draft trademark policy for use of "Slonik":
> >>
> >> http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Trademark_Policy
> >>
> >> Please comment on this policy here or on its discussion page.  Please no
> >> armchair lawyering, unless you *are* an attorney; we just want to make
> >> sure that this policy encompasses desired community uses, not its legal
> >> pedigree.
> >>
> >> Thanks.
> >
> > Uhhh what trademark?
>
> The 'Slonik' elephant logo has been a trademark owned by Marc for years.

A few comments then:

- Many of us know that "PostgreSQL" is registered as a trademark.  A
trademark policy on that might be useful, more so than for the logo.

- It's easy to find the registration for "PostgreSQL" in the Canadian
trademark database, but searching for the logo is a bit harder.  Link
please.

- In general, it would be better to give a complete account of who holds
what trademark and how alongside the rules that are supposed to govern
the use.

- Calling the logo "Slonik" is confusing, as "Slonik" is clearly (also)
associated with the Slony project, which incidentally uses a different
logo.  (Wasn't the old crystal elephant Slonik anyway?)

- If we're getting legalistic on the logo use, we also need a copyright
license for it (which would probably look very similar to the trademark
policy).