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WTF Dept: DataPortability Project Sued By RedHat
Written by Allen Stern - February 21, 2008
From the What The Fu** department, RedHat has sent a cease and desist (c&d for you home gamers) to the DataPortability workgroup for logo infringement. You see, RedHat uses a symbol that looks like the one to the left. The Data Portability logo is a dark D plus a light P combined to look like "infinity". You can read the entire complaint here.
My opinion: the logos look nothing alike to me.
Marshall Kirkpatrick shows a picture of a pretzel in the shape of the RedHat logo. I just went to Times Square and food cart operators were closing up due to fear of a C&D on the pretzels they sell. No one wanted to speak on camera in fear of their safety.
Former attorney and Techcrunch owner Mike Arrington notes, "The ideas are what’s important - the logo is irrelevant...Have a contest and let fans create a new logo for you." I agree with Mike and would hope that the contest would allow anyone to enter and the judging would be fair and wouldn't just pick a "friend of DP". Could be a good way to get the word out about DP past the geek bloggers.
Maybe RedHat is just pissed after today's Microsoft announcement? We've seen how pissy bloggers handle things - they attack. Maybe this is the way pissy operating systems companies handle things.
In all seriousness, c'mon RedHat, let's make more great products, not worry about a logo. Here are the logos for reference:
Our Partners
I think they got offended by the letter in the Mobius Strip, its a creative idea, good thing designs aren’t protected under utility patents, or else we would all be screwed.
Really? You don't think those look similar? :)
But in all seriousness, there's an underlying legal reason why they may be pursuing this - unlike copyright and patent law, if you don't actively police potential infringing uses of a trademark, the mark can lose some of its protection over time.
Hell yeah, they look similar. But since when can one company strain the infinity sign for themselves?
That would be like demanding that you are the owner of a color. Oh wait that happened already. Forget what I said!
In all seriousness - this is stupid. It's not like dataportability is a million dollar coop. riding the popularity Fedora Core has achieved. Dataportability is trying to do some good work from which many people will benefit in the long run.
You're obviously not to bright. This is the best thing that could possibly happen to data portability. They get tons of free press coverage from nerds like you that don't realize it was all probably planned in the first place.
I love how anonymous people call other people "not bright". That's so grown up and also very courageous (note: sarcasm).