Salvete! > I haven't followed this at all, so can anyone fill me in on what this > actually means in New Zealand? That Liblime can sue the library to force > them to change Koha's name? > > I now notice that Archivists' Toolkit, Archon, and Islandora are > trademarked. Before I say anything at all, I want to be clear that these are personal opinions that I'm giving for informational purposes. You asked, and as a Librarian, I'd like to answer you properly. Also, I'm going to do the I'm Not a Lawyer Dance. I know a wee bit about IP in the States, but once you port that over to eNZed, it's mostly meaningless since their laws are different. I'm not speaking for the Community; I'm not the Kaitiaki. The very simple, non qualified, non John Kerry response to your second question is yes. Und nao for ze qualifications. They don't quite hold the trademark just yet. Their application has been accepted. Also, the they in question is PTFS US, not Liblime and not PTFS Europe. LibLime is a subsidiary of PTFS. My favourite description of PTFS comes from a colleague that said that they're a company that bought a company (Metavore, dba LibLime [think engulf & devour]) who bought a company (Katipo). Another thing to keep in mind is that since they hold a not quite set in concrete mark in the US, they could theoretically get all sue happy on any number of US Libraries and businesses that are using Koha. I personally suspect that they haven't yet since they're on rather shifty earth. Who knows? It could just be that Roy Tennant hasn't approved of this sort of behaviour. (tongue in cheek, as with nearly all Roy Tennant references) [1] Timing is pretty important here. PTFS like to whing and moan that they're misunderstood and not actually evil. Okay, okay, fine. The whinging is mostly that they contribute to the community and they bought things fair and square, et cetera. [2] It should be noted that PTFS Europe do actually help out, and they're a different beast entirely from PTFS US. If the Community participation theme were true of PTFS US, when they bought LibLime, they would have either dropped the trademark pursuits that were in the hopper, or once the applications went through, turned the property over to Horowhenua Library Trust (Now Te Horowhenua) for safekeeping as was decided by the Community. Pardon me if I'm skeptical of a corporation that penned a promise that they'd support the Koha OS Community and then took radically different actions from their words. [3] Perhaps they mean commits, so I suppose they ought be applauded for one commit of 8 lines for 3.6. [4] Learning about what Koha means is equally important to understanding the situation. [5] Having giving and reciprocity feature so strongly in the product is one of many reasons I'm reluctant to just give in and let the defence contractors run rough shod over tradition. I personally chafe at how close to manifest destiny this stuff comes. The attitude seems very much to be “Well, we bought it first, so it's ours now.” There are scores of businesses in New Zealand that already use Koha as part of their names. I just can't visualise the mental contortion needed to get this word out of the public domain as a generic Te Reo term. This sets a terrible precedent: a Library selects a meaningful name, utilises it for over a decade, and then is routinely harassed and possibly sued over the use of what they started. There's a lot of potential harm here. It's not just Horowhenua, it's every Koha user and every Koha developer that stands to lose. If we don't fight, every one loses. Cheers, Brooke [1] http://blog.libraryjournal.com/tennantdigitallibraries/2009/09/15/liblime-to-the-koha-community-fork-you/ [2] http://twitter.com/#!/obelos (who has 3 commits.) [3] http://koha.1045719.n5.nabble.com/PTFS-Koha-Community-Support-and-the-Koha-org-Website-td3056839.html [4]http://blog.bigballofwax.co.nz/2011/10/23/statistics-for-3-6-0/) [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koha_%28custom%29