The #Firefish word #trademark is registered for NICE classes 9, 41, 42, i.e. computer software and services etc., for the whole of the European Union (and I believe for the UK too, not checked). Server admins in those jurisdictions, you may want to avoid domains containing the word or at least get legal advice before deploying a server with such a domain - this could potentially be costly otherwise.
I should add for completeness that the existing registrations do not exactly match the provision of social networking software and services and some relevant activities in classes 38 and 45 are not registered at all, but the existing protection is broad (in particular for class 9, but this may be more a risk for the project itself, not the individual server) and close enough to consider the legal risk - a specialist lawyer will be able to do so. #calckey#firefish#trademark
@choyer@fediversenews@feditips The rule with domains is: Whoever gets the domain first, gets it. Trademarks have no meaning with domain names. Reminds me of the German person who bought a Google domain when they forgot to renew it. Google had to pay up. It was legally that person's domain and there was nothing Google could do other than buying it from that person.
@choyer@fediversenews I should also add, that if the trademark is registered under "computer software and services", that means it's still available for other categories. You could create a detergent called Firefish and legally register it, because it falls under another category (assuming no one did that before you).
Now, you might tell me that I'm wrong about that, too. To which I will only say, Linux (the kernel) is a registered trademark, but also only for a certain category, which is why this is possible: https://www.roeschswiss.com/en/11_linux
And yes, it's a real product, I've seen it in grocery stores. And yes, they have a registered trademark on Linux (for another category).
@choyer@sin@fediversenews to add one more example: gmail.pl was registered to some person and hosted a website for book lovers (that translated into gmail acronym). Court in Poland denied the claim to this domain and Google eventually paid him.
@jan@fediversenews Yes, which belongs to the Mastodon charitable enterprise that creates, maintains and encourages the use of the software. The Firefish trademark belongs to an independent third party software and computer services company. This creates a different level of legal risk.
Add comment