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Date:      Sun, 22 Aug 1999 10:00:37 -0500
From:      Kevin Day <toasty@dragondata.com>
To:        Narvi <narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee>, Andrzej Bialecki <abial@webgiro.com>
Cc:        Kevin Day <toasty@dragondata.com>, "Daniel C. Sobral" <dcs@newsguy.com>, Nik Clayton <nik@FreeBSD.ORG>, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: "The Matrix" screensaver, v.0.2
Message-ID:  <4.2.0.58.19990822095052.00ad17c0@nfs.dragondata.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.990822144636.5453A-100000@haldjas.folklore.e e>
References:  <Pine.BSF.4.05.9908221335300.54215-100000@freja.webgiro.com>

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>On Sun, 22 Aug 1999, Andrzej Bialecki wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 21 Aug 1999, Kevin Day wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > I hate to keep bringing things like this up, or start a legal war, 
> but this
> > > screensaver is more than likely a copyright and/or trademark 
> violation, and
> > > bringing it into the source tree may not be a good idea. Yes, lots of
> > > people may be making things like this, but it would probably be best to
> > > distance FreeBSD itself from such a thing.
> >
> > You can trademark the title "The Matrix", but you can't trademark a common
> > word "matrix". That's the only word I use for the name of the module. As
> > Daniel mentioned, they even can't claim that it's their idea.
> >
> > So I think I can pretty safely import it.
> >
>
>If we wanted to be legally paranoid we would call it the "letter" saver
>and add as the comment the words

It's not just the name "Matrix" though. Make a screen saver of the Superman 
'S' logo, and see how quickly a certain comic book company comes after you. 
:) Making a derivative work based on something that was in a movie probably 
is a copyright violation. Warner Brothers could easily say that you've 
copied an element from their movie (even if it's not the entire movie), and 
even go so far as to get a judge to get any CD-ROM distributors of FreeBSD 
to recall all unsold CD's, and destroy them.

As for the trademark issue, it doesn't have to be a name to be trademarked. 
Logos, effects, and even sounds can be trademarked.

I'm really not trying to be annoying about things like this, but I already 
had to fight for the ability to be able to use FreeBSD at work, after they 
discovered other copyright/trademark violations in the source tree.. (Trek, 
etc). "If they'll steal things here, how do we know the entire kernel isn't 
stolen from somewhere else?" Yes, it's silly logic, but they do sort of 
have a point. We're selling a product with FreeBSD embedded in it. Should 
some copyright/patent holder come up proving that the VM system is his, and 
FreeBSD stole it from him, they could legally force us to recall every 
machine we've sold, and replace it with non-infringing materials. Obviously 
we're not shipping 'trek' on our system, and wouldn't include the matrix 
saver anyway, but I (for completely selfish reasons) would like to keep 
FreeBSD distanced from anything that could possibly be infringing on 
anything, and let you download it from somewhere else if you want it. :)

Kevin





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