Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 02:19:03 -0700 (PDT) From: asami@freebsd.org (Satoshi - Ports Wraith - Asami) To: jseger@scds.com Cc: ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Copyright Infringement policy? Message-ID: <199904120919.CAA40305@silvia.hip.berkeley.edu> In-Reply-To: <199904120007.UAA80682@scds.com> (jseger@scds.com) References: <199904120007.UAA80682@scds.com>
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* From: "Justin M. Seger" <jseger@scds.com> * What is the official ruling on the import of ports that have names * that violate copyrights? * * I am asking this specifically in reference to ports/7701, Dr. Mario. * * Dr. Mario is a trademark of Nintendo. You mean "names that violate trademarks" ? There are two issues here, the contents of the software and the names themselves. If you think a particular software might violate someone's trademark (or copyrights for that matter), then set it RESTRICTED so we won't be distributing distfiles or packages. The users can do whatever they want at their risk, so it's ok to make it a port. However, if there is a trademark issue with the name, then we have to be careful not to be marketing a product that's not the original. In partucular, the name of any directories/files can't contain the trademarked name in a manner that it easily resembles the product (in this case, "mario" and "drmario" is probably not ok, "dmp" or "dmgame" or some such is ok). Also the text files (COMMENT and DESCR in particular) shouldn't contain any direct references to the original game's name. On the other hand, it is ok to write something like "a clone of a famous video game where your hero runs around collecting coins and mushrooms". Before anyone shoots the messenger, no, I don't like it very much either, but that's what the lawyers and WC bean-counters came up with last time there was an issue (with tetris and stuff). -PW To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-ports" in the body of the message
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