Upstart trademark policy (was: Re: Proposed MBF - mentions of the word "Ubuntu")

[Ansgar Burchardt]

Hi,

Sune Vuorela <nospam at vuorela.dk> writes:
> Is upstart a canonical trademark? some pieces of software in the archive
> with canonical trademarks in their names? SHould we consider renaming
> them?

According to the footer on their homepage[1], "Upstart" is a trademark
of Canonical Ltd., but I could not find a usage policy for it.

Canonical's trademark policy[2] doesn't mention "Upstart" specifically
and is mostly concerned about the "Ubuntu" mark. For this it makes sense
to require modified versions to not be called "Ubuntu", but the
situation is a bit different with Upstart as Debian might need to patch
it (for example due to the CLA[3], differences between Debian and Ubuntu
or just backporting bug fixes).

Are those modified versions still allowed to be called "Upstart"? Would
Debian and Debian-derived distributions (besides Canonical's Ubuntu)
need a trademark license? Or would Debian need to rename Upstart (like
Iceweasel)?

Ansgar

  [1] <http://upstart.ubuntu.com/>
  [2] <http://www.ubuntu.com/intellectual-property-policy>
  [3] <https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/initsystem/upstart#Cons>