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Wikipedia trademark not registered by Wikimedia Foundation
Hello,

I recently looked up the German Patent and Trade Mark Office's
database for "Wikipedia". It resulted in two hits.

One is about the trademark "Wikipedia" in the area of tents, clothes,
shoes and sportsware and dates back to mid 2004.

The other one is about the trademark "Wikipedia" in three classes
containing a lot of IT related stuff including database service, data
collecting, telecommunication in general, online informations
services.

Owner is a company called "Firestorm Forces Ltd." and searching on it
together with Wikipedia I learned they're involved some bad
anti-Wikipedia agitation. Seems they're also acting as "Infochannel
Group" and as those clashed with german Wikipedians because of their
entry ([[Infochannel Group]]) in de.wikipedia. They also run a site
called Encyclopedia Wikimania (http://www.wikimania.co.uk), a quite
strange one with no real content.

I can't say if the classes they registered are relevant and interfere
with what "our" Wikipedia does. But it might be and then it could
become troublesome for us.

The trademark was filed in November last year and puplicated on
January 27th 2006. That means the opposition period end on April 27th.

Maybe someone is interested in doing some more research and foundating
might think about filing an opposition.

Regards,
Jürgen
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Re: Wikipedia trademark not registered by Wikimedia Foundation [ In reply to ]
Hi,

On Sun, Apr 23, 2006 at 11:58:56AM -0700, Jrgen Herz wrote:
> Hello,
>
...
> Owner is a company called "Firestorm Forces Ltd." and searching on it
> together with Wikipedia I learned they're involved some bad
> anti-Wikipedia agitation. Seems they're also acting as "Infochannel
> Group" and as those clashed with german Wikipedians because of their
> entry ([[Infochannel Group]]) in de.wikipedia.

"Firestorm Forces Ltd." and "Infochannel Group" are identical.

> They also run a site
> called Encyclopedia Wikimania (http://www.wikimania.co.uk), a quite
> strange one with no real content.
>
...

yep, and we'll loose wikipedia.eu, wikimedia.eu and other .eu
domains to them too, I suppose.
(because of completely incompetent handling of .eu matters on
Wikimedia side)

> Maybe someone is interested in doing some more research and foundating
> might think about filing an opposition.

Try to send it to juriwiki-l, unfortunately from my experience its as
useful as sending it to /dev/null

Jan Kulveit (User:Wikimol)
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Re: Wikipedia trademark not registered by Wikimedia Foundation [ In reply to ]
Eh, just a quick note - there are four days left. Better be bold and
at least try to get some delay on it, instead of waiting for someone
to take care of it.

--
Pozdrawiam,
Dariusz Siedlecki
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Re: Wikipedia trademark not registered by Wikimedia Foundation [ In reply to ]
Actually we are already taking care of the german stuff with a German
Law Firm. We have been working on this for 3 months already.

Do not try to do anything on your own that would complicate everything.

Same thing for the .eu stuff. We are facing a company that is
agressively acting against us, and we are trying to handle this the
best we can.

Now, I hope you will believe me if I say that things are not as bad
as they look :-)

I also hope to give you more details once we'll begin to get some
results. But you know, when it comes to judicial stuff, communication
is not easy.

Best,

Jean-Baptiste Soufron
wikimedia foundation
chief legal officer

Le 23 avr. 06 à 23:39, Dariusz Siedlecki a écrit :

> Eh, just a quick note - there are four days left. Better be bold and
> at least try to get some delay on it, instead of waiting for someone
> to take care of it.
>
> --
> Pozdrawiam,
> Dariusz Siedlecki
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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Re: Wikipedia trademark not registered by Wikimedia Foundation [ In reply to ]
On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 00:02:35 +0200 Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:

> Actually we are already taking care of the german stuff with a German
> Law Firm. We have been working on this for 3 months already.

So that's reassuring to read - from the lack of information I can't
say promissing.

> I also hope to give you more details once we'll begin to get some results.

If you don't try to buy the trademark (see
http://ecommerce.infochannel.org/product_info.php?products_id=170) but
to object on the official way, I guess we'll se the result soon in the
DPMA database.

> Do not try to do anything on your own that would complicate everything.

Of course not. I'm not talking about full disclosure. But in my
opinion a little more information from the beginning on would have
been nicer.

Thanks,
Jürgen
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Re: Wikipedia trademark not registered by Wikimedia Foundation [ In reply to ]
>
>> Do not try to do anything on your own that would complicate
>> everything.
>
> Of course not. I'm not talking about full disclosure. But in my
> opinion a little more information from the beginning on would have
> been nicer.

Sorry but well... We are kind of over-busy :-)

It's better to ask :-(

Thanks,

JBS
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