I am extremely pleased to see that an existing application for "Open Guides" as a UK trademark (that I've been keeping an eye on for the last year or so) has now kicked the bucket:
http://webdb4.patent.gov.uk/tm/number?detailsrequested=C&trademark=21994...
Anybody fancy chipping in towards the 200 quid needed to register us a trademark? I'm sure we could raise it between everybody on this list (that is, if y'all think it's worthwhile - I do).
On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 09:48:01PM +0100, Earle Martin wrote:
Anybody fancy chipping in towards the 200 quid needed to register us a trademark? I'm sure we could raise it between everybody on this list (that is, if y'all think it's worthwhile - I do).
Could you elaborate on why you think it is worthwhile?
Cheers,
Dominic.
On Thu, May 27, 2004 at 05:48:34PM +0100, Dominic Hargreaves wrote:
Could you elaborate on why you think [a trademark] is worthwhile?
There are lots and lots of projects that inhabit the same topic-sector that OpenGuides does. Some are free, whether as in beer or speech. Some are not. Here's something JimH brought to my attention yesterday:
http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/1794/
It sounds an awful lot like the ideas that some of us have discussed for a mobile interface to OpenGuides. Whilst this is not relevant in terms of trademarking, my point is that we have competition on a lot of fronts. And somebody has already trademarked "openguide" in the USA:
http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=74529414
The world is big and mean, and we are neither of those. So I think even a small amount of pre-emptive defense on our part - in this case, a trade mark - would help us.
Don't even get me started on the patents issue :/
Earle
openguides-dev@lists.openguides.org
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Dominic Hargreaves -
Earle Martin