[HN Gopher] Decision: Red Hat, Inc. vs. Daniel Pocock / Software...
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Decision: Red Hat, Inc. vs. Daniel Pocock / Software Freedom
Institute SA
Author : jaboutboul
Score : 48 points
Date : 2022-03-16 19:36 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.adrforum.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.adrforum.com)
| jaboutboul wrote:
| There's a lot more to it than just this decision. Google the
| complainants name.
| tzs wrote:
| > Google the complainants name
|
| The complainant is Red Hat. I don't see anything interesting
| when I Google them. Googling the respondent, Daniel Pocock, is
| a lot more interesting.
| forty wrote:
| Some hint in the comments here https://lwn.net/Articles/887931/
| rwmj wrote:
| Comments on the LWN article are interesting:
| https://lwn.net/Articles/887931/
| kashyapc wrote:
| Yeah, this particular comment[1] is quite damning--the person
| got booted by FOSDEM, FSF Europe, Debian[2], Alpine Linux and
| more. I wonder if the court considered all this past evidence.
|
| [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/887955/
|
| [2] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
| bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=953378;msg...
| the_why_of_y wrote:
| Mr. Pocock is well known in the Debian community.
|
| https://www.debian.org/News/2021/20211117
| zenincognito wrote:
| >>The domain name is not used in bad faith, given that the web
| site directs people back to the trademark owner's site, doesn't
| ask for money, doesn't run banner advertising, doesn't ask for
| personal registration. It has been demonstrated that the
| trademark owner is suppressing the blogs of some volunteers with
| authorship rights and Respondent's site exists to give those
| voices an equal status. The founding documents published by the
| trademark owner (Exhibit 104) encourage us to give voice to all
| sides.
|
| Fail to understand fedora's motives here other than censorship
| zozbot234 wrote:
| You have to enforce your trademarks otherwise they might be
| declared invalid. Regardless of the final decision, what RedHat
| did seems pretty normal to me.
| atdrummond wrote:
| This notion that surefire mark enforcement can only be
| achieved through blanket legal action against all potential
| abusers of the mark is parroted on HN repeatedly; however,
| the real world situation is a bit more complex. A firm will
| not lose their trademarks if they don't aggressively sue each
| and every person/business who might potentially be infringing
| upon the firm's marks. In fact, for firms like Red Hat who
| are actively selling a product, (and therefore utilizing the
| mark in commerce and in a way that makes that mark very well
| known to potential customers) said ongoing business
| operations typically ensure that courts will regard one's
| mark as defended and active, especially if one ensures that
| the firm does go after the most very egregious violations.
|
| TL;DR: Firms do not need to obsessively litigate against
| every single person using their mark.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Fedora doesn't like Pocock because - I think many people would
| agree - he's an asshole. However, as Thomas More puts it in the
| play about his life and betrayal, "there's no law against
| that".
| pipapocock wrote:
| Red Hat may want to register domain names like weheartpocock,
| webetternotmakepocock, whyhavepococksparentsmadepocock,
| everybodylovesapocock, pococksizematters and wait for the
| boomerang complaint.
| sofixa wrote:
| If anyone wants a TLDR:
|
| > DECISION Complainant having failed to establish all three
| elements required under the ICANN Policy, the Panel concludes
| that relief shall be DENIED and declares that the Complaint was
| brought in bad faith and constitutes an abuse of the
| administrative proceeding
|
| RH are markedly less nice than before IBM took over, which is a
| pity.
| nix23 wrote:
| Oh look RedHat got that IBM spirit finally ;)
| MadsRC wrote:
| The respondent is quite the character...
|
| He's been expelled from the Debian project/community (source:
| https://www.debian.org/News/2021/20211117) and he's in pretty bad
| standing with Free Software Foundation Europe.
| jffry wrote:
| If this seems too long to read, it's about a domain name
| registration dispute between RedHat and a volunteer who
| registered wemakefedora.org (RedHat was seeking to gain control
| over the domain).
|
| The arbiter not only found against RedHat but also made a
| declaration that the dispute was brought in bad faith.
|
| The condensed excerpt is:
|
| "Accordingly, the Panel finds that the Respondent has rights or
| legitimate interests in the <wemakefedora.org> domain name both
| because Complainant consented to Respondent's use of the domain
| name so long as the website followed Complainant's trademark
| guidelines and because Respondent is making a legitimate
| noncommercial or fair use of the domain name, without intent for
| commercial gain misleadingly to divert Internet users or to
| tarnish Complainant's FEDORA trademark."
|
| and from the conclusion,
|
| "In light of these circumstances the Panel finds that Complainant
| brought this proceeding despite having clear knowledge of
| Respondent's rights or legitimate interests in the domain name
| and that the proceeding was brought primarily to harass the
| domain-name holder."
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(page generated 2022-03-16 23:00 UTC)