[luau] Universities Dispute with Red Hat over 'Fedora'

[Hawaii Linux Institute]

Filing an "intent-to-use" trademark registration is a common practice to 
smoke out potential "prior users" before committing to the use of a 
tradename. Whether Cornell/UoV have any prior user right is to be 
determined by the Patent and Trademark Office, or, if things get ugly, 
by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (at Washington, DC).  
However, as I understand it, RedHat has already told Cornell/UoV that it 
will not interfere with their continued use of the Fedora name.  Since 
Cornell/UoV had never taken any positive step to protect the use of the 
Federo name, until after RedHat filed for the trademark registration, I 
doubt they will get anything better than such a current use right, even 
if an opposition is filed.

I was reading Sunday's StarBulletin (the "Raising Cane" column).  Our 
Honolulu City Prosecutor's Office decided to prosecute a criminal case 
against a Waikiki resident who was accused by his neighbor of attempting 
to steal his Sunday newspaper.  For petty offenses, almost no one would 
bother to put up a big fight, and prosecutors can be almost always 
assured to claim a "WIN" (capital letters) and improve their win/lose 
ratio.  Whether cases like this should be prosecuted is decided by their 
supervisors.  This story says a lot about the character, or lack 
thereof, of those top brasses at our City Prosecutor's Office.  Wasting 
our prescious resources on those petty offenses has its victim--91% of 
our major crimes are unsolved.  One reason is that some police believe 
that  our prosecutor's office often demonstrated that it lacked the 
resources to prosecute major crimes even if they were solved.  Of 
course, if only 9% of the major crimes are solved, our prosecutor's 
office has not much to do but prosecuting a $1.75 attempt theft and jay 
walkings.

Back to the main issue.  Nowhere have I found which indicated that 
Cornell or UoV itself is making any official comment.  Until that 
happens (and I am very positive that both universities have better 
management team than our Prosecutor's Office), any discussion is 
probably premature.  wayne





Warren Togami wrote:

>On Thu, 2003-11-20 at 21:27, Ho'ala Greevy wrote:
>  
>
>>Warren & fellow Fedorians,
>>
>>just read this off slashdot:
>>http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/20/1722215
>>
>>
>>any updates you can glean for us?
>>
>>thx,
>>Ho'ala
>>    
>>
>
>Cornell/UoV is telling only one side of the story, which is a half-truth
>at best.
>
>http://www.fedora.us/pipermail/fedora-devel/2003-November/002346.html
>A few facts passed along from legal
>http://www.fedora.us/pipermail/fedora-devel/2003-November/002347.html
>One more bit of info that *was* public in the past if you paid attention
>to fedora.redhat.com and fedora.info sites.
>http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=86544&cid=7523611
>Alan Cox weighs in
>http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=86544&cid=7522341
>Some other guy weighs in
>
>http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/1120reseadispu.html
>Apparently IDG News interviewed Red Hat's general counsel about this.
>
>The only people that know all details about the initial consent from
>fedora.info and what happened are RH's lawyers and the fedora.info
>folks.  I suppose this means we'll be hearing more about this story as
>it unfolds.
>
>Warren
>
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>