On Tue, Dec 24, 2002 at 09:49:07AM +0800, John wrote: > > That's analogous to building from source. it's not what I'm discussing. > If, otoh, Burger King actually buys McDonald's product for resale then > it should be able to represent it as such. And if you /purchase/ Red Hat Linux from us, you can resell it as such. > > On the Boston Marathon, you can not create athletic gear with the > > Boston Marathon logo and sell it. Likewise you can not use the Red > > Hat logos to sell things without a trademark license. > > The point is that I have a package created by the original manufacturer. > What RH is seeking to do is correctly identifying that what I have is an > exact copy of Red Hat linux. I see some difficuly explaining that "These > CDs I have on offer contain Red Hat Linux" at PLUG and that those same > CDs "do not contain Red Hat Linux" at my office. > > Or that they only contain Red Hat Linux only if I don't (give them to you, or > sell them to you "for a nominal fee."). > > > It's doing it in a discriminatory fashion because some organisations can > do exactly the same thing without any legal problems and without payment > of any fee to Red Hat. I can understand how this can be very confusing if you don't have a good understanding of US and international trademark law. Any use of our trademarks (including, but not limited to): usage which might cause confusion in the marketplace, or which might imply an association, sponsorship, or approval of your products by Red Hat, or which might cause a consumer to believe that your products come from Red Hat without entering into a written agreement with Red Hat is trademark infringement. You can call downloaded copies "Red Hat Linux" and burn copies of "Red Hat Linux", and call it such at your office as long as it is only for use internally. Once you start calling it "Red Hat Linux" externally, you have entered into the marketplace wand you cause confusion as to the origin of the product that you're providing. I hope this clears things up and we can stop this thread now. If you have individual questions, comments, or concerns - especially if you're wanting to reproduce or redistribute Red Hat Linux or Red Hat Linux derived products, contact me directly and I will make sure your request gets routed to the appropriate people. Cheers, Matt
