[Gllug] Linuxemporium - Pink Tie

[Jason Clifford]

On Wed, 20 Nov 2002, Dave Cridland [Home] wrote:

> No, it can. However, even though it's permissable under the GPL, it's
> not permissable under trademark law to *sell* that copy. There's other
> software with similar restrictions, and even though it somewhat confused
> me at first, it's fair enough really. So the software can be copied, but
> the name cannot. That would become passing off, which could leave RedHat
> wide open to serious abuse.

Not at all true. Passing off is an attempt to pretend to be the other 
company.

Selling goods that are protected by trade mark under the correct mark (ie 
selling Red Hat Linux as Red Hat Linux) is not a breach of English Trade 
Mark laws either as the Act has a specific section stating that it is not 
infringement of a mark to use it to correctly identify a product.

The deal with Red Hat however is purely copyright.

The Red Hat images are not released under any form of Free Software 
license. They are now purely proprietary (albeit that earlier copies are 
not!) and thus cannot be copied without consent which is withheld by 
default.

Jason Clifford
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