[OpenID board] On trademarks
Johannes Ernst
jernst at netmesh.us
Wed Mar 14 23:49:09 UTC 2007
Bill and I have been looking around some in terms of what policies
other similar organizations have with respect to their trademarks.
Mozilla's is probably the best-thought-out and best-applicable here
(see http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html in case
you are interested)
The best way of thinking about this might be that we need to be very
clear about what the term "OpenID" refers to from a trademark
perspective, and what it does not refer to. This is quite challenging
given the decentralized innovation process we have had, and really
want to keep in this community. In Mozilla's case, for example, the
clearly say that the term Mozilla may only refer to unaltered
binaries, and that you must not use it to refer to non-standard
builds although you are of course free to use the open-source code.
It appears that we must identify similarly a set of "unaltered
things" (such a specifications) and police the mark whenever somebody
refers to a thing (e.g. a specification) that is not part of that set
of unaltered things at that point in time. This is largely consistent
with what the community has practiced so far, but as more and more
people innovate around the core set of OpenID specifications --
particularly if it happens in conflicting ways -- , this is going to
be more difficult.
At tomorrow's board call, I'd like to discuss:
1. the principle of identifying a set of specifications by the name
"OpenID", and disallowing the use of "OpenID" for specifications that
are not part of that set (perhaps there is a way of calling them
"proposed" or "built on top of ..." or something like it)
2. the need for a process by which the set of specifications by the
name "OpenID" gets established and administered over time (e.g. add
specifications to the set, upgrade specifications in the set,
obsolete specifications)
3. the need for a similar policy page as Mozilla's that I referred to
above that clearly sets out our policy.
To keep this manageable for tomorrow, I propose we don't discuss
which set it should be, nor what process it should be, and only focus
on getting consensus that these two items are required. If we can get
there, we then can attempt to define both for the next meeting, and
how to express it publicly thereafter.
Johannes Ernst
NetMesh Inc.
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