[lug] Adobe GPL attack in Germany

[rm at mamma.varadinet.de]

On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 10:13:12AM -0600, John Hernandez wrote:
> $2k?  Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't attorneys normally bill their clients for services?  In this case, I'm sure Adobe would spring a measly $2k to sucessfully defend their trademark without further litigation costs.  If a trial judge were to get ahold of this, I'd bet the initial offer to rename the program would be deemed sufficient, and Adobe would be ordered to pay the legal fees for both parties.

Slow, slow ;-)

This is unfortunately a text that went through several hands ....
First of all: 

 Adobe isn't atacking, it's a Law firm.

 This is not an atack ata all against GPL or Open Source.
 As a matter of fact, it's not even about software at all.
 The letter sent to Kai-Uwe Sattler is a so-called "Abmahnung".
 This is a legal act specific to german law: if someone violates
 trade laws ("Wettbewerbsrecht"), for example by putting up wrong
 prices in commercials or by using someones _registered_ trademarks
 any lawer or consumer organisation can send the violator a so-called
 "Abmahnung", basically informing him/her of the fact and threadening
 a lawsuit. The person receiving such a letter has the chance to stop
 his acts and pay a fee (the ~ 2000 $ mentioned in this case) or ignore
 the letter -- in which case he/she might risk to be taken to court.
 So far this isn't a court case -- it's the atempt to solve a conflict
 outside the court. Arguably the whole procedure can be (and is) abused
 by dubious lawyer who scan newspapers for violations of trade laws
 (some of which are _very_ subtle), but as far as i can tell from the
 original newsticker message what happened so far is:

 Adobe, via the Law firm ' Reinhard Skuhra Weise & Partner' has sent
 an "abmahnung" to the university whose webserver houses the 'KIllustrator'
 webpages claiming that the name violates their trademark on "Illustrator".
 It's probably a smart move to target the university who has much less
 reason to stand up and fight Adobe than the developer who might likely
 get help from the Open Source community.

 The whole trademark/domain-name bussiness is pretty complicated over
 here (most domain fights end up as trademark fights) in germany, which
 makes live for webmasters/developers not easy, but this is _not_ anything
 related to Open Source/Free Software, it happens to shareware authors all
 the time.

  Ralf

> 
> Deva Samartha wrote:
> > 
> > You may have seen it on /.
> > 
> > http://www.mtbwr.com/kay-uwe.html
> > 
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