Many many major organizations have open-source or open-content projects. These projects produce vast quantities of freely available code or content that can be freely modified and redistributed, yet these same projects protect their trademarks like vultures.

I recognize the importance of trademarks, even in open-source projects. Especially for larger organizations like Canonical, protecting the Ubuntu brand is essential, but it doesn’t have to be protected from everything. Unfortunately, our legal system here in the US encourages bulk trademark infringement notices by requiring trademark holders to “protect: their trademarks by enforcing them.

I actually think Canonical handles this issue fairly well, but I would certainly be in favor of a more relaxed view of trademark infringement in our legal system. Just because something is using a word I have a trademark on doesn’t mean it is confusing anyone, whihch is the real purpose of the trademark system, at least in theory.

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