It seems that the Linux Foundation has decided that both “systemd” and “segmentation fault” (lol?) are trademarked by them.
“Patent troll” and “required actions to preserve trademarks” are two totally different things. The former is objectively bad in all ways. The second is explainable if there truly is a trademark and said gear infringes on the trademark and may be excusable if the Linux Foundation is forced to act to preserve their branding (trademark law is weird). It’s even more explainable if this is a shitty auto filter some paralegal had to build without any technical review because IP law firms are hot fucking mess. I’m also very curious to see the original graphics which I couldn’t find on Mastodon. If they are completely unrelated and there was an explicit action by someone who knew better, the explanation provides no excuse.
Attacking any company because the trademark process is stupid doesn’t accomplish much more than attacking someone paying taxes for participating in capitalism.
Why does the Linux Foundation even have a trademark process for “segmentation fault”? According to the poster on Mastodon, these words were the whole design.
Just like champagne only comes from the champagne region of France, true segmentation fault only comes from a linux program shitting itself.
Linux is the imposter here. Segmentation fault refers to how the PDP-(I forget) hardware organized memory. It comes from the original unix implementation which linux has never had any part of.
Segmentation fault is the name of the artwork.
The artwork itself might contain the Linux logo
Doing a search on the USPTO shows no mark for that combination of words. Did the poster share the design? Because either there’s more to the story on their side or there’s more to the Linux Foundation side. For example, an overworked paralegal with no concept of what terms to include. Alternatively, someone being an asshole with a SLAPP suit. We need more information.
They might not; that is just the title of the art. The art could have other infringing content.
My comment contains “if” because, speaking from professional expertise, there is a good possibility this is happening because of either a legal agreement I don’t have insight into so I can’t comment on or because of incompetence. It could also be happening from malice which, imo, is the kind of SLAPP bullshit Nintendo is deservedly attacked for. I’m not trying fanboy anything here; I’m just saying we need more information for pitchforks. The Linux Foundation has my implicit assumption of positive intent (unlike, say, Nintendo), so I’m willing to wait and see what happened here before I start attacking The Linux Foundation for something we have a screenshot from Mastodon on.
If you believe my professional opinion is wrong, I would love to learn more about why.
The trademarks owned by the Linux Foundation are listed here: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/legal/trademarks Neither “systemd” or “segmentation fault” are listed. Something smells funky here.
Can a third party lodge a complaint and claim to be acting on behalf of The Linux Foundation? Maybe someone is trolling here.
Isn’t that what copyright/patent trolls are? People who lodge complaints on the behalf of others, regardless of whether or not the original owner of the intellectual property actually cares, or in some cases, even is legally allowed to do so? If it’s the original owner, then it’s usually just considered to be protecting property.
No, patent trolling is when you patent a bunch of stuff and make money by suing people instead of actually producing that product.
Filing complaints on behalf of someone you don’t legally represent is fraud.
Here’s a great explanation from silicone valley. .
The best example I know of is Microsoft buying up insanely broad patents that can be marginally related to Linux, getting Suse to say Linux totally infringed on Microsoft’s patents in exchange for not getting sued and selling Linux licences to MS, and then harrasing the shit out of every Linux software and hardware manufacturer for over a decade. They stopped when they realised Linux is not going down and that they depend on it for their infrastructure, and that EEE is a better strategy overall. So now they gave away those patents, and Suse is out while Canonical is in.
I have rather serious doubts that this is legit. More likely some joker pretending to be from the Linux Foundation sent Redbubble a takedown request.
I agree. Of the 188 marks registered to “The Linux Foundation” with the USPTO, there does not appear to be a mark for “systemd”, “fsck”, or “segmentation fault.” My guess is this is an imposter claim and the artist should counter notice this claim to Redbubble.
FWIW (and assuming the link works) here’s the marks ever registered to the Linux Foundation.
The complaint is not about the terms “systemd” and “segmentation fault.” Those are the titles of the affected artworks. Presumably the artworks themselves contain some trademarked property.
Also, this is utterly unrelated to patents.
this has nothing even remotely to do with patents, fam
but it is indeed bullshit.
the purpose of a “trademark” is to prevent the public from being deceived about what they’re purchasing, so you can’t sell “Big Macs” on your own because the public might be deceived into thinking they were purchasing a product from McDonalds, which (I assume) has trademarked the use of “Big Mac” for fast food.
I HIGHLY doubt the Linux Foundation owns the trademark for “Segmentation Fault” with respect to random merch, so… yeah 100% bullshit
(The image does also say “Linux IP” in addition to “Linux Trademark” and I wonder what the hell that is supposed to mean, since “IP” covers a multitude of dissimilar things, maybe it’s just a vague handwavy assertion they make in order to make a takedown without particularly justifying it?)
