Small OSS Library Project Battles US Corporation 118
New submitter abesottedphoenix writes "The rural library responsible for the first open source library catalogue is under attack from defence contractor PTFS. More than a decade after rolling out Koha (which we've discussed in the past), they now find themselves in a battle to keep a generic Maori term within the public domain. The story is also covered at Radio NZ. "
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I for one note the correct spelling of the word 'Maori' and find this site grinding at my roots up to my boots in incompetence!!
I don't think he misspelled Maori deliberately - I've submitted one of the dupes to this story - the Slashdot editing/preview ate the a-macron in Maori and displays it as Mori instead; so I expect abesottedphoenix did the same thing.
generic Mori? (Score:2, Informative)
Am I confused today, or did you mispell Maori?
That said, Trademark only applies in a specific field. If whoever it is has a Trademark for anything other than a library, his trademark in no way impacts the small library in question...
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I know it is pointless to say - but RTFA. PTFS wants the trademark for their fork of the library software.
Re:generic Mori? (Score:4, Informative)
No?
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They would have spelled the term correctly, but to do so violates someones trademark on the term "M-a-o-r-i"
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Not even "Māori" displays correctly. How come slashdot still doesn't support non ASCII characters? At this point it is probably more of a tradition thing than difficulty of implementation, right?
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Posting to cancel wrong moderation.
Mori? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you mean Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand.
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Re:Mori? (Score:5, Interesting)
There may well be Maoris on Slashdot. You can't see tattoos over the Internet. Now, there are probably no Moa on Slashdot and I hope there are no Keas (they're terrorists, I tell you!), but that's ok, there are enough bird-brains as it is. I have great respect for the Maori and it is intensely sad that I lost all of my mementos from my year in New Zealand after a storage place fire.
Back to the issue at hand. It is completely reprehensible that a "common word" (because it IS a common word in New Zealand) can be trademarked at all. That is not acceptable, in and of itself. It is a flagrant abuse of the system, relying on the fact that Americans are not very up on foreign cultures. I am increasingly of the opinion that words should not be trademarkable at all. A "trademark" is, after all, first and foremost a mark. From the Sumerians to the Victorian English, this has been a stamp, a unique symbol that denotes the origin and guarantees authenticity. Arguably, the seals produced by stamps and signet rings serve the same function.
You can always make a new symbol. Creativity is endless. But you can't create a new language every time foreigners decide to trademark words from it.
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Re:Mori? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Which, IMHO, is utterly wrong, completely in violation of the spirit of what a trademark is and probably in technical violation of the written law but IANAL.
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Not in New Zealand you can't. Although apparently that only applies to little people.
Re:Mori? (Score:4, Funny)
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No No, he means Mario that Italian plumber that jumps on turtles.
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No no... he means Boatmurdered where the dwarves were obsessed with cheese, talking with dwarves, and the killing of dwarves by pachyderms.
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thank you, summary makes no sense (Score:3, Interesting)
ok. usually i can understand /. summary immediately. sometimes i have to read the article. sometimes i have to do some extra research.
but this summary just does it - it makes so much "no sense" that i have no fucking idea what is it about and i'm just going to skip the topic.
"Microsoft Jailbreaks OSS Bitcoin MAFFIA " (Score:2)
but this summary just does it - it makes so much "no sense" that i have no fucking idea what is it about
Like Google News, Slashdot doesn't have an editor. You wand your submission accepted, all you need to do is hit ther geek's hot buttons in your headline.
Re:thank you, summary makes no sense (Score:5, Informative)
> but this summary just does it - it makes so much "no sense" that
> i have no fucking idea what is it about and i'm just going to skip
> the topic.
which is real a shame, because what is happening is nasty, evil, theft (in the correct IP usage of the term) from a long established volunteer community by newly arrived greedy corporate. Or just take a moment to listen to the linked 2 minute mp3?
here is the real project's "about" page: http://koha-community.org/about/ [koha-community.org]
"Koha" is a Maori word meaning gift (often in a quid quo pro sense). Note that Wikipedia lists it as a custom. It is a truly wonderful name for a GPL'd project for the public good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koha_(custom) [wikipedia.org]
read the mailing list plea from the librarian here:
http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/pipermail/openchat/2011-November/008940.html [nzoss.org.nz]
a blog post:
http://news.tangatawhenua.com/archives/14545 [tangatawhenua.com]
and the thread that follows.
http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/pipermail/openchat/2011-November/thread.html#8943 [nzoss.org.nz]
favourite quote from the ensuing thread:
listen to more audio from NZ public radio than what's in the /. submission here:
(Scroll down to the Ogg @ 9:44 am)
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon [radionz.co.nz]
The project was founded by a small country town library in 1999 when the Y2K bug was taking out their existing solution and they couldn't afford to buy another one. Since then it has grown to be a large and wonderful FOSS success story. Until last year, when an associated company that held the domain name and provided commercial support got bought out by a big corporate bully, who took ownership of the DNS and domain name, taken over the home page, obfuscated links to and existence of the community (which has had to rush out and register http://koha-community.org/ [koha-community.org] instead of their original koha dot org site), and now are trying to block the community from being able to use their own name, on their own turf. It seems that Liblime has grabbed the trademark already in the US; the original koha-community.org group after they got over their shock was able to get in first in the EU, but not Liblime (a US company) has moved in to grab it in the community's home country of New Zealand.
PTFS/Liblime's actions here are truly despicable, and if I were a customer I'd have to wonder if they are willing to screw over the people who built up the project from nothing, what is stopping them from screwing me over too?
Please visit the Koha-community.org [koha-community.org] site, read the plea: http://koha-community.org/plea-horowhenua-library-trust/ [koha-community.org]
and help out their non-existent legal fund with a small donation:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=FQ6JH3L48LV5Y [paypal.com]
(your dollar goes far here; they are a registered legal non-profit, paypal's freezing of funds typically happens to unregistered projects who are basically ignoring tax laws, so they should be safe from that)
written article here:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/91830/lawyer-labels-overseas-trademark-of-'koha'-offensive [radionz.co.nz]
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Re:thank you, summary makes no sense (Score:5, Informative)
Wow - there has to be an easier way to explain this. A two three sentence summary perhaps? Like what the problem was before, what great thing was conceived of and what the threat currently is...
Hmmm... simple... let me try.
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Horsepoop. By asserting their trademark, they are *in fact* asserting that they are the only Koha distribution. That's what a trademark does.
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thank you, slashdot, for reviving some old comment of mine and attaching to this article. for the record, this comment was originally to some other article where summary indeed didn't make sense (this one actually does).\
it was a bit of a surprise, though. started reading the comment. thoughts go like this : /.) having a problem understanding, this was a pretty clear summary... hmm, i think i have seen this somewhere before... OMGWTF"
"hey, what's this guy (there are no girls on
Maori definitely misspelt (Score:5, Informative)
Kia ora from Wellington NZ
Maori was definitely misspelt
link to wikipedia article on the Maori term Koha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koha_(custom)
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Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically a company who has extended and NOT given back to the community is now wanting the trademark the name of the Open Source product.
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That's what I got out of it...
Not sure what the hell the defense contractor has to do with anything? LibLime appears to be the guilty party here.
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That's what I got out of it...
Not sure what the hell the defense contractor has to do with anything? LibLime appears to be the guilty party here.
Liblime sold themselves to PTFS (a defense contractor) in 2010
'LibLime was founded in 2005, as part of Metavore Inc.[2] and purchased by Progressive Technology Federal Systems, Inc. (PTFS) in 2010.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liblime
and, some comments from PTFS/Liblime... (Score:1)
here's a very interesting recent discussion about this - with comments from PTFS/Liblime
http://diligentroom.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/the-exemplar-of-stupid-koha-vs-liblime-trademark/
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Oh, so you ARE an employee of LibLime then. I figured you were, since you're the only person defending this shitty behaviour.
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Basically a company who has extended and NOT given back to the community is now wanting the trademark the name of the Open Source product.
If LibLime has distributed Koha binaries, but not source, they have violated its Copyleft license, which is much more serious than a trademark dispute. Is there any evidence they've done so? LibLime's FAQ [liblime.com] says
Q. LibLime Koha is open-source software; doesn’t that mean it’s free?
A. Yes, LibLime Koha is open source and so LibLime Koha is free, in fact you can download it yourself from a number of sites, including here. LibLime is an open source support company and we were established in 2005 to work with libraries that wish to run LibLime Koha but do not have the internal resources to manage a system.
LibLime offers the following services:
-Professional project management for your LibLime Koha implementation
-Set up and implementation of your LibLime Koha instance
-LibLime Koha Training
-Migration of legacy data
-Hosting and support (help desk and online ticketing system)
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Better summary (Score:5, Informative)
A commercial company that has been reselling an open-source product now wants to claim ownership of the product itself. Because the current owners are not well funded, there is a prospect that they will be able to do so.
The current owners, being incredibly naive, claim to have been under the impression that foreigners couldn't trademark Maori words. (Possibly they've never heard of Coca-Cola [wikipedia.org]. Even now, they're only trying to fight the trademark application in New Zealand, so I'm not sure what (if any) effect that would have internationally.
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'Poor' is a better word than 'naive'. They're just a small library, they cannot afford things like legal fees. Hopefully the EFF will step in here.
The history (Score:5, Informative)
Short version: PTFS ended up owning the community domain name and a trademark for Koha due to some weird stuff that has happened over the past 12 years. PTFS is not well regarded by the general community due to how they try to confuse users into thinking theirs is the only version, their practices which (from what I can tell) make versioning a nightmare, and their lack of regard for the community. The community does not want them to gain any more ground.
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I believe they already have a US trademark for Koha (3619202).
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Defense contractor? (Score:2, Informative)
Sure, PTFS counts some DoD entities among its clients, but it's odd to refer to a company that has clients like the Holocaust Museum and the National Library of Medicine as a defense contractor.
That being said, it's super shady for a company that got started solely to provide end-user support for an OSS system to try and trademark that system's name.
Licensing? (Score:2)
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... It could be argued that trying to seize a trademark in connection with a work is tantamount to claiming ownership of that work, which is copyright infringement.
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The dispute has nothing to do with copyright (and therefore Copyleft) AFAICT. I don't see any claim that LibLime is distributing proprietary derivatives of Koha. This is only a trademark dispute. If LibLime is trying to gain trademark protection for a term they adopted from the already existing project, that is an attempt to mislead at best and commit fraud at worst, but it has nothing to do with the GPL.
The following parts don't make sense... (Score:1)
1. rural library responsible for the first open source library catalogue
2. defence contractor PTFS
3. More than a decade after rolling out Koha
4. in a battle to keep a generic Mori term within the public domain
Is Koha a generic Mori (Maori) term? What is a library catalog? Like a public library catalog of the books in the library? Who is PTFS?
As far as the TM goes, If I make up a word called Azkio but it turns out to be a generic term in a language that less than .0002% of the people in the world would recog
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Is Koha a generic Mori (Maori) term? What is a library catalog? Like a public library catalog of the books in the library? Who is PTFS?
As far as the TM goes, If I make up a word called Azkio but it turns out to be a generic term in a language that less than .0002% of the people in the world would recognize does that mean a TM is invalidated?
Koha is the Maori word for "gift" - It's about as generic as the english word "gift". An example in the New Zealand context would be Te Papa Tongarewa (translates as "container of treasures" - the National Museum of New Zealand) having a box by the door labelled "Koha" in the hope you'll put some money in it to help support the museum and to show your appreciation for the place.
If you ask almost any New Zealander what Koha is (that's approximately 4 million people) they'd nearly all say it means gift or d
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a language that less than .0002% of the people in the world would recognize does that mean a TM is invalidated?
By my rough calculation our 4 million people gives us 0.057% of the world's population recognising the phrase :-)
The basic fact is that this is an extremely arrogant move. A company is taking a "common word", which ironically means gift, and using it for commercial gain for open source software that was created in the very country they're applying their trademark in.
The Maori meaning of "koha" is more complex than Gift - and if you start to understand the moral obligation that underpins true "koha" - you re
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If I make up a word called Azkio but it turns out to be a generic term in a language that less than .0002% of the people in the world would recognize does that mean a TM is invalidated?
In the country whose native language it's a generic term in, I would imagine so, yes.
Evildoers abound? (Score:1)
sounds like a job for Anonymous. ;)
It is possible to trademark generic terms (Score:3)
IANAL But the Tabasco story is a famous and an interesting trademark case [vegastrade...torney.com] .
Since Tabasco is a state in Mexico and a name for a pepper, McIllhenny understandably had a hard time cementing its claim. Right or wrong, McIllhenny vigorously defends this hard-won mark to this day.
Certainly not right in my opinion (Score:3)
Just legally possible, although not morally defensible. The law, we all know well, does not always equate to justice. And that is especially true of IP law, of course.
By referencing this case I was pointing out that the NZ library has every reason to be worried. Since this rather creepy little company going after the Maori trademark has plenty of creepy company. I had no intention of defending them.
Personally I am outraged by Daddy Pepperbucks century of non-stop litigious bullying. They even went aft
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I certainly agree that the TABASCO trademark should never have been granted and the company has defended it with reprehensible tactics. I've often enjoyed their products since I was young, though ironically I prefer their jalapeño sauces to the original. I will now more likely buy competitors' products.
Maybe in the US its ok (Score:3)
but this kind of behaviour is not OK in New Zealand. What if someone from NZ snuck over and trademarked "Honour" (or "Honor" on your side of the pond)?
Frankly, I'm fed up with corporations behaving like this then bleating that they are only doing it to secure their profits which justifies anything as you know. Time they got taken down a peg or two.
I find something is wrong with this approach (Score:2)
Instead of spending their own resources to dispute the trademark, they ought to consider if the trademark covers their own domain of application - similarly to how Apple Inc and Apple corps are both trademarks built on a single English word, but technically don't cover the same area - one is a trademark on an IT brand, the other is a trademark on a music store, and one should not be able to confuse one for the other (although they have fought over the name, needlessly really). Is LibLime asking them to C
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I am unable to adequately express my dismay regarding your sheer ignorance of the situation at hand.
So, if you could just punch yourself in the face, just as hard as you can, that'd be great. Well, it wouldn't be great for *you*, but I'd feel a whole lot better knowing it had been done.
Thanks.
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I'm pretty sure LibLime's application for trademark was the first (and probably only) one. It seems that the originators of the project didn't apply for a trademark because they didn't think the generic word "Koha" could be trademarked. Horowhenua Library Trust is not saying they should hold the "real" trademark but that the trademark shouldn't exist at all.
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they're the same product. they can't co-exist.
it's like ubuntu going and trademarking "debian" to fight loosing downloads to debian-mint.
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"Debian" was trademarked [uspto.gov] in 1999, long before Canonical came along anyway. While Canonical and Mint must use the term "Debian" in compliance with the Debian licensing policy [debian.org], Canonical gets to determine Ubuntu trademark policy [ubuntu.com]. Whether "Koha" can be trademarked seems a similar question to whether "Ubuntu" can, since it's also a generic word in several languages [wikipedia.org].
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How do you loose a download?
If it's extraordinarily tight, perhaps you mean loosen?
get used to it (Score:1)
I'm from Tasmania, where our most recognisably tasmanian icon the Tasmanian Devil(TM) (since we killed the Tigers) is trademarked by a US company
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_Devil_(Looney_Tunes) [wikipedia.org]
The sad truth. (Score:1)
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Are you sure it's not the "businesses" that hire those lawyers who are really to blame?
How about some actual facts from a LibLimer? (Score:1)
This summary and the ensuing discussion are so full of dumb and FUD, it's hard to know where to start. I'll list a few bullets:
1) If managing one of the Navy's library catalogs makes PTFS/LibLime a "defense contractor," that's a serious diffusion of the term.
2) PTFS/LibLime has held the same trademark continuously in the US for several years without any attempts to limit its use. The same applies to this trademark.
3) PTFS/LibLime's project is also OSS: https://github.com/liblime/LibLime-Koha
4) The LibLime c
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Considering the behavior of ptfs/liblime up to now, why would any reasonable person trust ptfs/liblime as a steward of the koha trademark?
Yes, your divisive and herd-ish community is a real trust broker.
Thank you for not referring to the ptfs/liblime fork as "koha". By saying that "...PTFS/LibLime's project is also OSS," you seem to be acknowledging that it is separate from koha, so why not call it by a different name?
Why not call HLT's project a different name?
Is the small size of ptfs/liblime supposed to excuse its abhorrent behavior and lack of moral compass?
One of HLT's tactics is to spin us as some mega-corp bully.
False. HLT is the side that claims that LibLime should not be permitted to trademark the name "koha".
Please spend 30 seconds on the HLT mailing lists or IRC after mentioning LibLime's name. All of the following commentary will predictably be along the lines of "that's not *real* Koha" or "they have no right to use that name." Please cite one, just one, instance where PTFS/LibLime has said that about HLT. Just one.
So, are you saying that HLT is to blame for not taking "...the issue seriously enough to stop their own trademark..." from being acquired by ptfs/liblime? In other words, ptfs/liblime is not responsible for what it is doing, but HLT is to blame for allowing ptfs/liblime to to do it?? Wow, you folks at ptfs/liblime really have no moral compass at all.
No, I'm saying that in addit
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Thank you for not referring to the ptfs/liblime fork as "koha".
By saying that "...PTFS/LibLime's project is also OSS," you seem to be acknowledging that it is separate from koha, so why not call it by a different name?
Why not call HLT's project a different name?
Um, because they were the ones that created the project? Duh.
Is the small size of ptfs/liblime supposed to excuse its abhorrent behavior and lack of moral compass?
One of HLT's tactics is to spin us as some mega-corp bully.
Which your posts here are doing a damn fine job of reinforcing.
So, are you saying that HLT is to blame for not taking "...the issue seriously enough to stop their own trademark..." from being acquired by ptfs/liblime? In other words, ptfs/liblime is not responsible for what it is doing, but HLT is to blame for allowing ptfs/liblime to to do it?? Wow, you folks at ptfs/liblime really have no moral compass at all.
No, I'm saying that in addition to their hostility and divisiveness (which is what has prevented PTFS from simply canceling the app when we found out about its existence), HLT is also incompetent. They let their own application fall to rot. If they had not done so, they could have (probably successfully) contested PTFS' claim. But this way it sure is useful for garnering attention and donations.
Which still doesn't explain why FTFS feels it has to trademark the name at all. The only reason you need one is if you actually feel you have to protect the brand from dilution (i.e. Ubuntu, Red Hat, Debian, Firefox) - many OSS projects get along just fine without one.
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And you obviously work for LibLime, so noone cares what you have to say anyway.
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Is it possible that you had a noble and worthy goal and went about achieving it in, shall we say, a less than optimal manner?
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