Substrings used in a trademark The Linux Foundation is a registered trademark of The Linux Foundation. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. But Linux is a substring of The Linux Foundation. Is it OK for someone to claim a trademark including another trademark as a substring (such as The Linux, My Linux, Free Linux, etc.)?
The trivial answer is yes, at least under certain circumstances, as the example you give shows. First, the concept of substrings is not particularly useful in trademark law. IF that were the case, then we wouldn't be able to have a company called "Gaudiest Clothing Brand" because it contains the substring audi. But, you might say, what about looking at words instead of characters, as with the example of "Linux" and "The Linux Foundation." In that case, I offer the example of "Target," which is a word found in literally thousands of US trademarks. You'll notice that the first item on this list where word mark is simply target, rather than a phrase containing that word, doesn't even belong to the well known chain of stores. This brings us to another important aspect of trademark protection, which is that the mark's purpose is to identify a producer of goods, a provider of services, or particular goods or services themselves. You could probably start a bookstore called McDonald's, unless you're near Redmond, Washington, but you certainly would not be able to use that name for a chain of hamburger-based fast food restaurants. Back to the subject of Linux, one possible explanation here is therefore that Linux is a trademark for an operating system, while The Linux Foundation is a trademark for a non-profit foundation that is concerned with the operating system. The trademarks don't represent competing entities. Consider, for example, the disclaimer on volkswagenownersclub.com: VolkswagenOwnersClub.com is an independent media publication. VolkswagenOwnersClub.com and its owners are not affiliated with or endorsed by Volkswagen AG or Volkswagen of America, Inc. Volkswagen is a registered trademark of Volkswagen AG. All rights reserved. All information Copyright 2006-2010 (Also consider, for example, the case of Apple Corps, Ltd. and Apple Computer, Inc..) As far as I can tell, however, "Volkswagen Owners' Club" is not directly relevant to this question, because it is not a registered trademark, and the question concerns two registered trademarks. I am not sure whether two such trademarks could coexist if there were an adversarial relationship between their owners. In this case, hwoever, the trademarks are used together because the owners have a collegial relationship. They work for a common goal, the promotion of the product identified by one of the trademarks. The foundation's use of the trademark is therefore undoubtedly with permission. In fact, the Linux foundation is Linus Torvalds' employer, and one of the foundation's purposes is to manage the Linux trademark that Torvalds owns. Now the question of derivative trademarks, such as My Linux is clouded by the fact that Linux is an open source operating system. In principle, you can't modify a product and then sell it using its original trademark unless you have permission. For example, I don't suppose I could rebottle Coca-Cola with some added salt and pepper and sell it as *Phoog's Coca-Cola" unless I had permission from the owner of the trademark. With Linux being an open-source project, however, the terms of the open source license probably explicitly permit people to use the trademark under certain restrictions if they offer, for example, a customized distribution of Linux
First, copyright does not apply to "brands". Copyright exists in literary works which includes art - a picture (any picture) usually has a copyright belonging to the creator of the picture. Brands are protected by Trade Marks. To be clear: A picture of you is protected by copyright belonging to the creator The phrase "Mickey Mouse" is protected by trade mark belonging to the Disney corporation A picture of Micky Mouse is protected by copyright and trade mark. (when) would it be legally OK for me to do so without the copyright owner's permission? You can use copyright material without permission if you meet the fair use criteria in your jurisdiction. You can use trade marks if there is no risk of people confusing your goods and services with the trade mark holder's and you do not cause damage (including loss of potential income) to the trade mark holder or it is fair use (e.g. you are writing a review of a Micky Mouse cartoon). Is it legal if I do not distribute them to others at all? No, this would be OK as copyright fair use, but not as trade mark fair use. Is it legal if I give them to my family/relatives for free, e.g. as a gift? No, not fair use for either copyright or trade mark. Is it legal if I give them away to others for free (meaning I'm losing my own money on them)? No, see above. Is it legal if I sell them to others at-cost (i.e. for the same price I obtained them, meaning I'm not making any money from them)? No, see above. If the answer is "yes" to any of the above, can the copyright holder explicitly prohibit me from doing so, or would such a prohibition be unenforceable (e.g. if this would be fair use)? It isn't allowed. Yes they can stop you. No, it isn't fair use; there is no "fair use" defence for trade mark infringement here - you are depriving them of income because you are not buying their T-shirt! Any other factors that are relevant but which I'm forgetting? Will they sue you for doing these things? Probably not.
Yes, that's true Common words are not trademarkable, as is a descriptive phrase, because a trademark needs to be distinctive. As the Netherland Trademark Office tells you, your mark can't fit in any of these categories: literal - Your tradename or logo must not literal describe or depict your goods or services. promotion - The trademark must amount to more than a value judgment alone. misleading They even have an FAQ about that! The trademark is descriptive - which is the most common reason. A trademark is descriptive when it describes the properties of the product or service or promotes these. For example: the words 'super fast bike' for the product category 'bicycles'. Please note: the wording here is not always in common usage. The trademark 'medi' is not listed in the dictionary as a common abbreviation for 'medical'. All the same, it is a common designation that consumers will understand right away in the discriptive sense. So, this type of trademark could also be descriptive and hence declined. Computerrepair is a literal description of what the business does, just like Biomild on a mild biological yogurt just describes it.
It is unclear whether WINE is infringing copyright or if it can rely on a fair use defense. The CAFC held that: that the declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization of the API packages are entitled to copyright protection In that light, if WINE had original content in the structure, sequence, and organization of its API, the CAFC would likely also find that it is entitled to copyright protection. However, because this issue is outside the scope of the CAFC's exclusive jurisdiction (this is a copyright issue, not a patent issue), the holdings are not binding in any other circuit. Each circuit is free to review anew the copyrightability of APIs when such a case comes up. My guess is that this is the reason the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal on CAFC's Oracle v. Google opinion. To address your fair use question would be simply speculation, because fair use is always assessed case-by-case, and even in WINE's closest analogy (Oracle v. Google), the CAFC remanded the fair use question back to the trial court, and that question hasn't been decided yet: we remand for further consideration of Google’s fair use defense in light of this decision
The MIT License (as distributed by OSI) does not include an attribution requirement beyond the requirement to include the copyright notice in any re-distributed copy including derivative works. The same is true of the description of the license as described in the Wikipedia article. If you sent back to the maintainer a modified version including your own contributions with an MIT license notice and your name in the copyright statement, that is a new work released under that license. The maintainer (or anyone else) may not lawfully use your work or incorporate it into a new derived work without complying with the license terms, which require retaining the copyright notice. By distributing the combined work using a copyright notice not including your name, it would seem that your license is being violated. You could contact the maintainer with a request that your name be included in the notice or your contributions be removed. If that is not accepted, you could use a take-down notice, or file suit. That last would involve significant costs, of course.
The GPL does require you to keep any existing copyright notices: You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you [...] keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty [...] The GPL also recommends adding a notice to each file: Copyright (C) yyyy name of author - This program is free software[...] From my reading of the GPL, if the software you modify contains such notices, which is likely, you must preserve them. This effectively attributes the original author. However, as far as I can see, there is no requirement to have a list of acknowledgements (as is customary in scientific papers), which lists all the software you used. How to attribute parts that are integrated in source form? (Where licence information is given in the file header) If you keep the original file header (and possibly add to it), that should be enough. How to attribute parts that are integrated in binary form? As far as I can see, there is no additional attribution required for distribution in binary form. The GPL requires you to supply the source code along with the binary form, so the attribution in the source code will be available.
Registered Trade Marks aren't the only form of trade mark protection. You also have the law of unregistered trade marks. Basically (and this is an over-simplification), it works like this: a business starts using a trade mark for a specified product: beard comb. Let's say that they don't even register a trade mark. they start selling load and loads (thinks 100s of thousands of $ or £ worth) they become well-known in that market segment. They accrue "goodwill" in the (unregistered) trade mark. That trade mark is protectable in law. That's a summary of the law of passing off aka the law of unregistered trade marks. So, if the new manufacturer is still manufacturing them in the country that you want to sell them in, you'll probably have a problem. This assumes that that country has an equivalent of the law of passing off. The tip then has to be - check to see if the manufacturer is still selling them. If you think it's a good business opportunity and worth a small amount of risk capital - a few hundred $ or £, file the trade mark application is see if anyone does anything about it. You can always withdraw it and avoid a dispute. You might also do a search for registered design rights. They protect the shape of the products (not what it's called - which is what a trade mark does).
You can't grant or license that which is not yours. For example, the Slack terms of service say: We grant to Customer a non-sublicensable, non-transferable, non-exclusive, limited license for Customer and its Authorized Users to use the object code version of these components, but solely as necessary to use the Services and in accordance with the Contract and the User Terms. So Slack's agreement with Org A does not give A any right to let any other organization B use the software. It does not matter how A and B are related, nor whether B is nonprofit or for-profit, nor what A would be getting in exchange. If B wants to use it, they need to make their own agreement with Slack.