Linux® Trademark in Australia

One of the organizations whose board I sit on, Linux Australia, has been working on securing the Linux trademark in Australia. We’ve actually been working on this for a very long time. It’s a long story that goes something like this:

In some countries, the term “Linux” is a registered trademark owned by Linus Torvalds [if you want the gory details about how that came to be, see pages 133-135 of Just for Fun. Yes, you should click that, buy the book, and make me rich].

As it happens, some people (including, Linus, as astounding a co-incidence it may appear) seem to think that Linus has better things to do than worry about administering the ownership of the Linux trademark. Since he didn’t really want to worry about it, he assigned responsibility for administering the trademark he found himself owning to an organization setup expressly for the purpose called Linux Mark Institute.

Sometime in 2003, someone brought it to our attention that the Linux trademark wasn’t registered in Australia and that we should be doing something about this intolerable situation! (Yes, you should feel some ironic sarcasm there, as I reflect on all the people who think our little band of unpaid volunteers [1] should be doing something about whatever their intolerable situation happens to be).

So, we set about finding out what had to be done to get it registered in Australia for the further benefit of the global Linux and Open Source community that we serve. That took longer than we expected – it turns out that trademark law and dealing with IP Australia is rather more complicated than perhaps it might be in that ideal world we all like to pretend we live in. After a few bats at the piñata (not to mention considerable elapsed time), we finally clued in and retained legal counsel (ie, hired a lawyer) to pursue the matter for us.

The counsel that Linux Australia instructed, a jovial fellow (who also is a right proper geek) named Jeremy Malcolm, has been toiling away at this for some time now. He recently resolved some outstanding confusion (mostly just crossed wires between all the unpaid volunteers involved on various sides of whichever your favourite ocean is), and is putting together the final pieces of the puzzle that will resolve the issue properly. Part of that was a sending a letter to various people around the country who might happen to be using Linux professionally, asking them to indicate their knowledge of the international trademark and their support of it.

As is quite usual in our community of mostly unpaid volunteers, a few people overreacted and thought that they might have an intolerable situation on their hands! (Yes, it might have helped if Jeremy had been a little more specific that he was acting on our behalf, but then again…)

Alas, no, it’s nothing worth getting excited about. You see, we’ve proceeded with the trademark application already. So long ago that it ought to be decided soon, and when it is it will be assigned to the person who should (and in my IANAL opinion defacto does) own it, Linus Torvalds. Then LMI can take over, and the situation that should have existed all along will, and thus the destructive conflict will be at an end and order will be brought to the galaxy.

Since people were bugging him about it, Jeremy just wrote up a FAQ page, to which I happily point anyone who a) is still reading, and b) still thinks that there is an intolerable situation to be had.

Incidentally, the title of this post is the first, and expect last, time I will ever bother putting that stupid ® mark beside the word Linux :)

AfC

[1] There are many levels of meaning when you consider that the link unpaid volunteers doesn’t go anywhere. It’s intended for many different audiences. You know who you are. I think I should trademark null://, though.