[foundation-board] Open Knowledge Foundation trademark portfolio - 5th Jan deadline

Thu Dec 19 15:40:33 UTC 2013

All,

*Question for the board:* Should we add US [and optionally other territory]
registration to our existing EU trademark filing, for a total of 6 marks at
a cost of around £2k per mark?

*My recommendation: *Not at this time, to control costs; having CTM is
adequate for now for our purposes

*Reason for email: *we may wish to file by 5th January to get advance date
on the marks; after 5th January we can still file but won't gain additional
6 month date advantage

*If any board members feel we should move to file in the US or any other
countries before 5th January, please respond asap and certainly by 1st
January.  If I don't hear anything I will NOT file for additional countries
before 5th Jan.*

Full background below.

best regards,

Laura

*Background*:

With board authorisation for total costs around £10k total we began the
process of registering the below trademarks in EU27 last summer.   These
have now just been published for opposition purposes.  We have until
January 5th 2015 to file additional marks in other countries if we wish to
claim the original filing date in those new countries.  We can of course
file marks later on but the dates would be from the new application, not
from this original round of applications.

We chose to file trademarks to protect our brand against misuse and to give
us some grounds on which we could deal with, for instance, a local group
"going rogue" and doing something bad, or a group using our name but not
following our open principles.  Without a much more formal legal structure
for community engagement, we have few options to protect our brand, and the
trademark gives us a straightforward route to tackle problems if they
arise, rather than adding friction to the process of engaging with us.

As advised we filed for EU / CTM marks in the first instance and now we
have heard these are published, we are able to extend to new territories.
The US seems the most likely where we may wish to protect, as it is large
and active in open data; I can get quotes for other territories as well if
desired (eg SE Asia, Africa, S America, all of which are growing areas for
our work)

Trademarks applied for, based on advice from Charles Russell LLP:

OKF
OKFN
Open Knowledge Foundation  + Logo
OpenSpending logo-style mark
School of Data logo-style mark
CKAN

Filing in the US is estimated at £2k per mark (ie total £12k) and other
countries will add to this. I can secure quotes from Charles Russell if
desired.

-- 

*Dr Laura JamesCEO  | skype: laura.james  |  @LaurieJ
<https://twitter.com/LaurieJ>The Open Knowledge Foundation
<http://okfn.org/>Empowering through Open Knowledgehttp://okfn.org/
<http://okfn.org/>  |  @okfn <http://twitter.com/OKFN>  |  OKF on Facebook
<https://www.facebook.com/OKFNetwork>  |  Blog <http://blog.okfn.org/>  |
 Newsletter <http://okfn.org/about/newsletter>*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/private/foundation-board/attachments/20131219/6961c364/attachment.html>