[OpenID] [legal] OpenID Trademark assigned to the foundation

[SitG Admin]

At 3:29 PM -0700 4/14/08, David Recordon wrote:
>We (Six Apart) did the same with the logo last week.

A few observations on the OpenID logo - among the benefits of 
individual membership is "Use the OpenID Foundation Member logo", but 
in a brief search of the linked-to sites of all eight Community Board 
Members (and the only Corporate Board Member with a link), I didn't 
find anything that looked remotely like the OpenID logo, except for 
the normal mini-logo right by someone's user ID preceding their 
comment. So, are some of the icons at openid.net/logos/ reserved for 
Foundation Members only? If not, what do the reserved logos *look* 
like? I tried a Google search for "OpenID Foundation Member", but 
found only repetitions of the same offer.

I also think it would be very useful to make available a variation on 
the current logos that have "openid.net" drawn across them. Sure, it 
would interfere with the pristine state of the logo (which might 
damage recognizability), and it wouldn't even fit at *all* on the 
tiniest version, but it would let supporters of OpenID use, say, the 
100x100 pixel logo as their userpic, and this would not only promote 
awareness of the OpenID logo (among non-users) but show them where, 
on the web, to go to for more information.

I thought of making such a modification myself but I refrain for 2 
reasons: first, it's probably against the trademark/copyright, and 
second, even if it isn't it *should* be and I don't want to set a bad 
precedent - even if that sort of thing would be allright with the 
Foundation, later on someone else might think "Well hey let's just 
put MY site on the OpenID logo." and argue that users of OpenID are 
allowed to do whatever they want with the logos. (This might not be 
as dangerous in misrepresenting OpenID itself, once the trademark 
stuff gets to a point where similarly-named sites (such as 
whatisopenid.com) can be acted against, but keeping the number of 
URL's displayed thusly, restricted to a small number, would expose 
viewers to a consistent URL and they'd be more likely to remember it.)

-Shade