[Koha] Koha trademarks

[Rachel Hamilton-Williams]

Joann Ransom wrote:
> Can someone please help me understand what this statement at the 
> bottom of the new Koha website means for the Koha community:
>
> "The Koha -- Open Source Library System is © 1999-2009 by LibLime & 
> the Koha Development Team
>
> Koha^® and the Koha logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of 
> LibLime <http://new.koha.org/liblime.com> and BibLibre 
> <http://biblibre.com> in the United States, France and other 
> countries. Distributed under the GNU GPL license 
> <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/>."
It means just what it says. I believe that individual contributors 
retain copyright of their particular "bits" of the work that go into 
"koha", which is who the "koha development team" are. Listing them all 
would be a bit cumbersome, and I think Liblime are the majority 
copyright holder at the moment. It's a little bit of a hangover from 
when Katipo ran the site - we had a similar statement.  We haven't had a 
"body" to assign our copyrights too, so they are still owned by the 
people who wrote them.

Various important names and trademarks have bee registered by some 
companies usually in their local jurisdictions to make sure they are 
held by someone within the Koha community.

Both Liblime & BibLibre have said they'll assign those assets to a koha 
foundation when one eventuates, but of course we have to have a legal 
body who can "hold" them before they can be assigned.

Cheers
Rachel
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jo.
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>   

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