Not sure where to post this question or who to ask, but here goes anyway....

Who owns the trademark for XOOPS? For example, there are many XOOPS fork projects (for example e-xoops, XOOPS Cube etc) that use the name of Xoops, and indeed other support website (eg. myxoops.org, planetxoops.com etc etc).

How can these people get away with using somebody else's trademark?

Linus owns the Linux trademark and allows people to use it to further the Linux cause (that's why we have companies with the name "Linux" in them).

http://slashdot.org/linux/00/01/19/0828245.shtml

But what of XOOPS? Many people use the XOOPS name. Does this mean permission been given by an owner?

Just curious. Has this been discussed before? Is there an official view?

Andy

https://xoops.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2138

I've read the news article and comments, and I can't find any references to trademarks, or answers to my original post.

JulioNC hinted in the right direction tho But you're right, the answer isn't there -yet.

We're looking into the possibilities of registering the trademark to the XOOPS Foundation. It's definately not cheap tho, espeacially if we're going for an international trademark. Registering a brandname in the EU only costs $4000 already. That's a lot of money for the Foundation, and the benefits are minimal (we're not going to ask money for the use of the name, are we?).
But, as I said, we're looking into the matter. The prices are set for commercial organisations and commercial use. If someone knows of a sponsor or consultant that is willing to help, that would be really appreciated

Herko

Thanks for the straight reply Herko. So you are basically saying right now, nobody owns or controls the use of the "XOOPS" name? I guess that is a good and a bad thing.

Andy

PS. If I had the spare cash I'd help out with the costs. Shame.