Open Stack

On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 08:45:37PM +0000, Brad Haque wrote:
> Ah ok, I see "Grizzly" now as an example?

Grizzly is a release codename, which is selected according to a
process documented here:
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Release_Naming

I believe the question here was specifically raised in connection with
names of projects proposed for incubation, but is certainly more
generally applicable.

>  I can't provide legal advice to the Foundation or this listserve,
>  but there are a lot of different elements in evaluating likelihood
>  of confusion (which is just an element of an infringement).  To
>  address the issue raised below, there may be areas where two
>  completely unrelated industries end up have overlapping business
>  which can cause infringement and issues (see e.g., Apple Inc. and
>  Apple Records).  So a trademark search on a product is usually
>  relatively thorough exercise involving an analysis of both state
>  and federal trademark searches in all industries and trademark
>  classes as well as international, web, domain name etc. uses.
>  Likely one of the member companies can do the search, but we could
>  not give any opinion whatsoever about the validity or usability of
>  the proposed mark.  That would have to come from Foundation
>  counsel.

> Richard or others may have better ideas, but you could also eliminate the need for a name and just use "OpenStack 1.0" or "OpenStack X"

For elimination of the release codenames, yes. Just guessing here but
I suspect that might meet with some resistance from not only the
developer community but also the Foundation staff.

- RF




> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Fontana [mailto:rfontana at redhat.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2013 12:18 PM
> To: Brad Haque
> Cc: Thierry Carrez; legal-discuss at lists.openstack.org
> Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Guidelines for naming new projects
> 
> On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 07:02:13PM +0000, Brad Haque wrote:
> > Are you using the name of the project in commerce?  Or is it solely for internal purposes? 
> 
> The various OpenStack project names are used publicly.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Thierry Carrez [mailto:thierry at openstack.org]
> > Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2013 9:05 AM
> > To: legal-discuss at lists.openstack.org
> > Subject: Re: [legal-discuss] Guidelines for naming new projects
> > 
> > Dolph Mathews wrote:
> > > I don't have a legal answer because IANAL, but starting with a US 
> > > trademark search is an easy first step:
> > > 
> > >   
> > > http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=login&p_lang=english&p_d=trmk
> > 
> > 
> > Someone (Jonathan ?) mentioned that trademarked stuff is an issue only where there is /some/ potential for confusion, like you're in the same kind of industry... i.e. a networking company called Lemon networks can't really sue a restaurant called "Lemon" over trademark grounds.
> > Could anyone confirm that ?
> > 
> > --
> > Thierry
> > 
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> > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-discuss
> > 
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