August 16, 2011

Bradley and Karen play and comment on a talk recording of Aaron Williamson's and Karen's presentation at OSCON 2011, entitled Legal Basics for Developers.

Running time: 00:53:53.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:33)

• Bradley mentioned the birthday attack when explaining to Karen how likely it might be that the number of the show might match the number of the day. (01:38)
• This show is a recording of Aaron and Karen's OSCON 2011 talk, Legal Basics for Developers. (02:20)

Segment 1 (05:53)

• The slides for the Legal Basics for Developers are available to follow along with the recording (05:53)

Segment 2 (49:36)

• Richard Fontana gave at a talk at OSCON as well, which was recorded, and Karen and Bradley have asked for his permission to play it. (50:45)
• Bradley asked folks to ping Richard on identi.ca to ask him to allow us to use his audio on the oggcast. (51:05)

Tags: bkuhn, karen, non-commercial, sflc, oscon, fontana, creative-commons, aaronw, patents, copyrights, trademarks, public domain, license compatibility, compliance, non-profits, gnome, questions, conferences, gpl

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April 13, 2010

Karen and Bradley interview Sean Egan of the Pidgin project.

Running time: 00:37:04.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:33)

• Bradley mentioned that Oprah Winfrey gave cars to members of her audience (1:05).
• Karen hadn't heard about the car giveaway, nor about the resulting tax snafu (1:30).
• Karen installed a Mozilla add-on to display face images in message headers (2:54).
• People now advocate for a Face header instead of X-Face (3:34).

Segment 1 (05:30)

• Karen and Bradley interview with Sean Egan.
• Pidgin was originally called gaim (6:37).
• Gaim was started by Mark Spencer (8:58).
• Instant Messaging Freedom, Inc. is the nonprofit home of Pidgin (19:25).

Segment 2 (26:24)

• Karen and Bradley wrap up from the interview
• Karen mentions Hot Tub Time Machine (27:40).
• John Cusack was also in Say Anything, Better Off Dead, High Fidelity and Being John Malkovich (29:20).
• Karen and Bradley agree that Back to the Future is a great movie (34:36).
• UPDATE: Karen went to see Hot Tub Time Machine, and calls it "highly enjoyable".

Tags: bkuhn, karen, trademarks

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March 2, 2010

Karen and Bradley discuss some basic issues regarding trademarks for Free Software projects.

Running time: 00:58:13.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:33)

• The Chaos Computer Club was founded in Berlin on September 12, 1981. (03:30)
• Bradley mentioned the Heinrich Böll's short stories, Dr. Murke's Collected Silence. (06:45)
• Bradley mentioned the Samuel Beckett's play, Breath. (08:42)
• Karen spoke about trademarks at Scale 8x. (11:30)

Segment 1 (14:06)

• Karen mentioned the slides of her talk would be on the SFLC website. (14:20)
• Trademark rights originate when you use a certain name and/or logo. (15:30)
• You have to use the mark “in commerce” (though for a short period of time you can file for registration with “intent to use”); to have the mark; however, the rules and lingo seem a bit “old fashioned” when focused on online publication and distribution of free software. (16:30)
• The most obvious benefit of registering a trademark is that registration is clear notice that the mark is being used, and creates a presumption of notice and ownership. (18:15)
• There are other Karen Sandlers, such as a Romance novelist and HIV researcher and doctor. (19:49)
• There is a Brad Kuhn (not Bradley) race car driver and a Bradley Kuhn killed in Arizona in 2008. (20:17)
• Bradley mentioned an issue of Sony's Restaurant in Baltimore in 1987, which was Bradley's first introduction to trademark law. (22:23)
• The Madrid Protocol is a treaty that helps people who have registered trademarks in one country to easily obtain registrations in other countries. (27:05)
• Trademarks are indefinite. A trademark can be kept as long as you maintain it and continue to use it. Copyrights, by contrast, are supposed to be limited by how long they can be held (but in reality don't seem to be, due to copyright extension lobby). (37:15)
• The GNU name actually carefully avoid trademark infringement of Unix by having the name say explicitly: GNU's Not Unix. (39:50)
• The classic example of a genericized trademark is “xerox” becoming a verb to mean “to photocopy”. (41:43)
• Bradley used a Used a vi implementation called vile on MS-DOS before he had a Unix-like system on his computer. (45:10)
• Karen recommends that Free Software projects adopt explicit trademark policies that explicitly permit all the types of uses that the project wants to permit. (47:13)
• Trademark implies some sort of quality control; “naked licensing” refers to giving a license without monitoring quality. (48:50)
• Trademark policy statements can be good tools to help handle “naked licensing” issues. (52:10)
• Bradley briefly mentioned the Iceweasel rename of Firefox in Debian. (52:40)

Tags: bkuhn, karen, trademarks

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July 21, 2009

Bradley and Karen discuss their panels at OSCON 2009.

Running time: 00:29:30.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:14)

Bradley mentioned that you can hear a follow up to the C#/Mono and patented language issue, which Bradley and Karen discussed on SFLS 0x11 in an interview with Bradley on Linux Outlaws 102.

Segment 1 (01:35)

• Bradley and Karen are presenting at OSCON 2009.
• After the recording of the show, Bradley and Aaron were asked to present the GPL enforcement talk that Karen and Bradley discussed. The talk is open to the public, so you can come by if you are in San Jose.
• Bradley is moderating a panel at OSCON, With Software as a Service, Is Only the Network Luddite Free?.
• Karen mentioned Bradley's previous talks on the subject.
• Bradley mentioned the Conan O'Brien joke, YouTwitFace.
• Karen is moderating a panel at OSCON, What's in a Name: Can Trademarks be Helpful to Free Software Projects?.
• Bradley told the story of naming GNU Classpath.
• Karen helped in the naming of Pidgin due a trademark dispute.

Tags: bkuhn, karen, numbering, agpl, trademarks, oscon

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March 3, 2009

Bradley and Karen discuss the issues and considerations for a FLOSS project selecting a license.

Running time: 00:40:30.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:25)

• Bradley mentioned license proliferation. (02:50)
• Karen mentioned the FSF License List. (04:40)
• Although they are saying it too fast, Bradley and Karen are saying the word “Affero”, referring to the Affero GPL. (06:50)
• Bradley and Karen discussed weak copyleft, such as the Lesser GPL. (16:00)
• Bradley mentioned thisSoftware Freedom Law Show: blog post of his where he says most developers have traditionally seen a licensing decision as something you think about once and never revisit!. (22:35)
• Karen mentioned the SFLC Primer.
• Bradley mentioned checking if a license is on the FSF License List, on the OSI License List and if it's DFSG-Free before using it. (27:21)

Segment 1 (28:15)

Karen and Bradley debate various issues about license selection.

Tags: agpl, patents, trademarks, copyrights, bkuhn, karen, fsf, gplv3

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February 17, 2009

In this episode of the Software Freedom Law Show, Bradley and Karen interview Van Lindberg of the law firm, Haynes and Boone. The discussion centers around explaining the difference between copyrights, patents and trademarks to Free Software developers.

Running time: 00:40:18.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:28)

• Unlike our previous guests Scott and Richard, Van is an external, or outside counsel, who are lawyers hired by the company or organization that advise it from the outside. External lawyers are often employees of law firms, as Van is. (02:07)

Segment 1 (03:47)

Interview with Van Lindberg.

• Van is an associate at a law firm called Haynes and Boone (04:15).
• The term we don't like that Bradley keeps referring to is “intellectual property”, which has often been criticized by people in the Software Freedom world, initially in the writings of Richard Stallman. (12:29)
• Karen asked if Van is a patent lawyer. “Patent lawyers” are lawyers who are the member of the bar in some state, and have also taken a special exam to allow them to practice before the United States Patent Office. “Patent agents” are non-lawyers who have taken the same exam and can also practice before the United States Patent Office. Practicing before the patent office is unique in the USA, as you can do so without going to law school and passing a state-level bar exam. (13:30)
• Van's book is Intellectual Property and Open Source, published by O'Reilly. (36:50)

Tags: bkuhn, karen, lindberg, patents, copyrights, trademarks