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Message-ID: <4D4C6191.70104@shanecurcuru.org>
Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2011 15:29:05 -0500
From: Shane Curcuru <asf@shanecurcuru.org>
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Subject: Policy suggestions for associated marks?
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How can we allow friendly third parties maximum freedom to use names 
that are related or associated to our key Apache marks, while still 
keeping a reasonable expectation of protection for Apache marks?

This is a case best described by example - although please note, I'm 
more looking for general advice or policy suggestions rather than 
specific comments on existing cases.

Example: The Apache Maven project ships the Maven software product that 
does cool build things, and the "Maven" mark is important to us. 
However the project has also encouraged (via documentation for 
developers) third parties to use the "MVN" name in their software that 
is related to Maven.

I.e. we encourage third parties to hypothetically build something like 
MVN Accelerator, which might let you use Maven and MVN Accelerator 
together for lighting fast builds.  In one way, this may be an advantage 
to the Apache Maven project itself, because it encourages third parties 
to build software associated with our software products.

A separate example is the Powered By metaphor [1].  The httpd project 
has long had a graphic that displayed "Powered by Apache" which we 
explicitly allow third parties to display on servers that use httpd 
software.

----
- What are the best ways to create these "associated" or "related" 
brands, especially to encourage third parties to respectfully name their 
related software products in an appropriate way?

- What issues do we need to watch out for to ensure that third party use 
of these associated brands (like MVN) does *not* significantly weaken 
our trademark claim to our primary brands for our software products 
(like Maven or "Apache")?


I believe if we can have some positive and easy to use guidelines in 
this are for Apache projects, that both a number of our projects, as 
well as a number of third parties, would start taking advantage of it 
pretty quickly.

- Shane

[1] discussed in more detail:
http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/faq/#poweredby
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/misc/FAQ.html#logo

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