This was extracted (@ 2024-04-17 21:10) from a list of minutes
which have been approved by the Board.
Please Note
The Board typically approves the minutes of the previous meeting at the
beginning of every Board meeting; therefore, the list below does not
normally contain details from the minutes of the most recent Board meeting.
WARNING: these pages may omit some original contents of the minutes.
Meeting times vary, the exact schedule is available to ASF Members and Officers, search for "calendar" in the Foundation's private index page (svn:foundation/private-index.html).
Covering the period February 2024 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - updated the events policy to remove the requirement to notify ComDev of proposed event dates - approved events for PULSAR, NUTTX and DORIS - approved use of FREEMARKER logo with the simple-icons project - approved use of SPARK logo for a YouTube channel - approved name searches for XTABLE, GLUTEN and AMORO - approved use of SUPERSET logo on a non-ASF website * REGISTRATIONS Worked with counsel to renew our APACHE registration in Japan. * INFRINGEMENTS Provided advice to ICEBERG regarding a possibly infringing page on a social media site. Provided advice to FREEMARKER regarding potential infringements. The AIRFLOW PMC is continuing to address a potential infringement with an external service.
Covering the period January 2024 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - provided advice around a champions program for AIRFLOW - two requests to use multiple project logos in books - provided advice to CASSANDRA and PEKKO around the use of OpenCollective - one request to use a project logo in an event booth - approved used of ASF marks for two 3rd party events Worked with PULSAR and OPENDAL to better align project website with branding guidelines. When a project brings a query to tradeamrks@ I am now trying (when I don't forget) to check the project's website against the branding requirements and requesting changes where necessary as this often helps with resolving the issue the project has raised. * REGISTRATIONS Continued to work with counsel to progress the GUACAMOLE registration. Worked with ASF counsel to renew the following registrations: - MADLIB - HAWQ - HADOOP * INFRINGEMENTS Worked with the IOTDB PMC to resolve some issues with a commercial website. Raised issues with use of ASF marks in a conference booth with the vendor.
Covering the period December 2023 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS VP Conferences updated the events branding policy: - updated announced event names from "ApacheCon" to "Community Over Code" - clarified "Announced Events" as "Foundation Events" - indicated responsibility of VP, Conferences over event scheduling instead of ComDev. Updated the draft downstream distribution policy to allow back-ports to unsupported branches to enable vendors to provide extended support. I expect to publish the 1.0 version of this policy in January. The draft downstream distribution policy triggered a handful of discussions around various points relating to naming, PMC responsibilities and distribution via other platforms. Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Approved events for AIRFLOW and FLINK - Approved names for RESILIENTDB, SDAP and OPENDAL - Provided advice to PULSAR, HBASE and ARROW regarding TLP website branding issues - Provided naming advice for an external "Champions" program * REGISTRATIONS Worked with ASF counsel to renew the following registrations: - CLOUDSTACK, US Continued to work with DEVLAKE to prepare assignment agreements in preparation for graduation. * INFRINGEMENTS None.
Covering the period November 2023 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Made some progress on the downstream distribution policy. Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Referred one event request to planners@ due to CoC date conflict - Provided advice to AVRO on permitted logo usage - Provided advice to SOLR on sharing information on external training courses - Approved names for TSFILE and RESILIENTDB - Worked with CASSANDRA to improve planetcassandra.org - Provided advice to FINERACT regarding a request to use the mark in a domain name - Provided advice to SDAP regarding the proposed logo * REGISTRATIONS The FINERACT registration in the US is complete. The LOG4J registration in the US is complete. Worked with counsel to maintain the NUTTX registration in the US. Worked with counsel to transfer the remaining SERVICECOMB registrations to the ASF. * INFRINGEMENTS Provided advice to OZONE regarding a potential infringement. Provided feedback on some potentially infringing uses of the ICEBERG name and logo on some conference stand material.
Covering the period October 2023 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Provided advice to the LUCENE PMC regarding spam messages about domain registrations in China. - Approved a request to use a screenshot of the httpd documentation in a book. - Approved one event based around KAFKA and ROCKETMQ. - Noticed that the HADOOP home page was using (TM) rather than (R) and requested the PMC to correct this. This was promptly corrected. - Followed up with ACCUMULO to see if Brand Management could help resolve accumulodata.com domain. No further action required at this time. - Provided naming advice for an external project built for ACTIVEMQ. - Approved a name search for TSFILE. - Redirected a marketing query regarding a CLOUDSTACK conference to the marketing team. * REGISTRATIONS Continued to progress the GUACAMOLE registration with counsel. Worked with counsel to renew registrations for FLEX in the EU and UK (class 9 only). Worked with counsel to progress the registration of APACHE in India. Worked on counsel and DEVLAKE podling to plan the transfer of marks to the ASF upon graduation. Worked with counsel to maintain our NUTTX registration. Worked on counsel and KIE podling to plan the transfer of marks to the ASF upon graduation. * INFRINGEMENTS The NETBEANS PMC raised concerns regarding netbeans.info. Research identified this as an old NETBEANS domain that should have been transferred to the ASF but appears to still be controlled by Oracle. It was strongly recommended that the NETBEANS PMC reaches out to Oracle to determine what resources Oracle continues to maintain for NETBEANS and comes up with a plan to either shut them down or transfer control to the ASF. Submitted a successful request to Red Bubble to remove stickers using an old ASF logo with feather from sale. Provided advice to ICEBERG regarding a potentially infringing Twitter account. Contacted a GitHub user on behalf of the MAVEN PMC to request name and logo changes for a project the PMC considered infringing. The logo and name were changed promptly. The FLINK PMC are addressed an issue with a cloud service provider. Reviewed planetcassandra.org and provided feedback. A number of GitHub issues were opened as a result but have not yet been resolved. Provided advice to OZONE regarding a potential infringement.
Covering the period September 2023 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - one request to create swag using project logos - provided advice to two prospective podlings regarding naming - declined a request to use the PULSAR logo within the logo for an external project * REGISTRATIONS Worked with counsel to maintain MESOS and HADOOP marks. Counsel has renewed our APACHE registration in Norway. Counsel continues to progress our APACHE registration in India. * INFRINGEMENTS Cassandra PMC is dealing with a potentially infringing site. Reviewed an EU registration for APACHE for potential conflicts - none found.
Covering the period August 2023 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD Received a request from the board to comment on branding questions related to CASSANDRA. The response has been sent to the board and CC'd to the CASSANDRA PMC. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - one request to use project logos within an external software product - one query from CASSANDRA regarding a potential infringement - one request to use the PINOT logo on a t-shirt - one query whether ASF letterhead could be used for a personal recommendation * REGISTRATIONS Directed counsel to renew the class 9 registrations for APACHE in Australia, Norway and Switzerland but allow the class 42 registrations to lapse. The FINERACT and LOG4J registrations in the US are progressing. Responded to the GUACAMOLE PMC regarding a query associated with their in progress registration. Worked with counsel to maintain the TEZ registration. Directed counsel to allow all registrations in all jurisdictions for PREDICTIONIO to lapse. Counsel in India continues to work on progressing our APACHE registration. ASF counsel highlighted that the process of transferring SERVICECOMB registrations has not been completed. I reached out to HUAWEI and this should be completed soon. The PMC has been made aware that if this process is not completed, the project will be required to change name. * INFRINGEMENTS Worked with the SPARK PMC to address a couple of issues in a commercial website. Refused to authorize an Amazon seller to sell download links for OpenOffice after Amazon suspended their account for doing the same. The Maven PMC has indicated they they do consider the previously mentioned issue as an infringement. I will start to address this in September. Informed counsel that the ASF has no objections to a registration in Brazil that was viewed as potentially conflicting with the ASF's IMPALA registration.
Covering the period July 2023 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Updated the name approval process to clarify that: - projects returning from the attic must comply with the name approval process in force at the time of their return - explicitly noted that names with Native American connections will not be approved - merged naming guidelines previously hosted under infrastructure documentation - removed wording from web site that suggested prospective podlings should submit a trademark registration before starting incubation - continued to work with CASSANDRA PMC to improve Planet Cassandra - worked with vendor to improve references to CASSANDRA on their website Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - approved one request to use project logo (MAVEN) within the UI of an external product - approved one request to use various project logos within an academic presentation - approved one request to use various project logos in training material - approved two requests (after dates were modified) for project based events - approved one request for a project based event and added it to the event calendar The CASSANDRA project responded to: - one request to use project logos on a conference booth The CLOUDSTACK project responded to: - one request to use the project name for a meet-up event * REGISTRATIONS Started the registration process in the US for AIRFLOW. Directed counsel not to renew the PREDICTIONIO (in attic) registration. Worked with counsel to progress the LOG4J registration. Worked with counsel to maintain the COUCHDB and TEZ registrations. * INFRINGEMENTS Asked the MAVEN PMC for feedback on possible infringement. Waiting for a response.
Covering the period June 2023 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - approved a 3rd-party event usage of the DRUID mark - approved a 3rd-party event usage of the FLINK mark - replied to a query regarding registering an additional domain for CommunityOverCode - Rejected one podling name search - Approved one request to use the JMETER mark for a training event - Provided advice to NUTTX regarding organizing an event - Provided feedback to Press and Marketing on the "original creator of" phrase - OPENOFFICE reviewed some sellers of installation CDs on Amazon - Provided feedback on the proposed CASSANDRA Ambassador program - Placed one podling name search on hold as the project has yet to approach the Incubator * REGISTRATIONS - DOLPHINSCHEDULER is now registered in China - Worked with counsel to renew the CASSANDRA registration in the US * INFRINGEMENTS Our opposition to the registration of a mark in Columbia that conflicted with our CASSANDRA mark was accepted and the registration of the conflicting mark denied.
Covering the period May 2023 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Provided advice to an external company on how to best describe their employee's contribution to an ASF project. - Reviewed two proposed t-shirt designs using ASF marks. - Provided advice to SOLR regarding use of the mark in a third-party domain name. - Provided advice to KAFKA regarding use of the mark in a third-party domain name. - Provided advice to KAFKA regarding use of the mark docker image names. - Denied three 3rd-party events due to date conflicts. Two requests were then escalated to VP Conferences. - The Brand Management team now has access to the ASF events calendar and will add events as they are approved. - Reminded an event organizer of the need to request permission to use our marks for their event. - Approved one event after dates were shifted to avoid CoC 2023. * REGISTRATIONS Provided advice to AIRFLOW regarding registration. Transfer of the DORIS marks to the ASF is now complete. * INFRINGEMENTS Continued to work with counsel regarding a registration that potentially conflicts with our CASSANDRA mark in Columbia. The BEAM PMC is addressing a potential infringement with a series of 3rd-party produce names. Requested removal of the ASF logo from a 3rd-party site.
Covering the period April 2023 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Provided advice to JMETER regarding mandatory links on project web sites. - Approved SeaTunnel as a proposed project name. - Approved one request to use ASF marks at booth at an external event. - Confirmed Brand Management was happy to review material relating to CoC EU 2024. - Clarified scope of rebranding efforts being undertaken by Marketing and Press. - Provided advice to a company wishing to use ASF logos within presentations. - Provided advice to OPENOFFICE regarding a request to use project software in a TV series. * REGISTRATIONS Provided advice to the KVROCKS podling regarding registration. * INFRINGEMENTS Continued to work with counsel regarding a registration that potentially conflicts with our CASSANDRA mark in Columbia.
Covering the period March 2023 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Provided advice to ZOOKEEPER and AIRFLOW regarding acceptable names for products designed for use with our software - Provided advice on how to reference DRUID correctly - Provided advice on the correct logos to use for external training materials - Approved PAIMON and SEATUNNEL as a podling names - Provided advice to JMETER regarding required links on TLP sites - Declined a request to use modified KAFKA and PULSAR logos in a combined logo/graphic * REGISTRATIONS Responded to a couple of queries from counsel regarding possible international registrations. No new international registrations were requested. * INFRINGEMENTS Resolved an unacceptable use of the ASF logo (it is no longer being used) on a corporate web site.
Covering the period February 2023 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Discovered there are BRAND and TM Jira project with some open issues. The Jira projects has been made read-only. The issues were reviewed, spam deleted and open issues moved to trademarks@ and then closed. - Provided advice regarding the "... for Apache Foo" naming style - wave restarted the work to update the list of marks on the website - provided advice to DATALAB regarding use of the full project name - discussed future registration options for COMMUNITY OVER CODE with VP Conferences * REGISTRATIONS Counsel attended a hearing in India regarding our request to extend our international registration for APACHE to India. The court will issue a decision in due course. APACHE DOLPHIN SCHEDULER has been registered in China. Worked to counsel on the assignment of NUTTX to the ASF. * INFRINGEMENTS Continued to work with counsel regarding a registration that potentially conflicts with our CASSANDRA mark in Columbia.
Covering the period January 2023 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Approved two suitable names and declined one. - Provided advice regarding ownership of marks of projects that enter the attic - Provided advice to KAFKA regarding a request to use the mark in an external domain name - Answered some internal questions regarding the 3rd party events policy - Approved an external event using the PULSAR mark * REGISTRATIONS Counsel continues to progress our APACHE registration in India. * INFRINGEMENTS Worked with counsel regarding a potentially conflicting registration with our CASSANDRA mark in Columbia. The PMC responded very promptly to a request to update the project's homepage to assist with this process. Was made aware of fake training certifications for commercial training for HADOOP. Passed details to the training vendor along with an offer of help if required - no requests to date.
Covering the period December 2022 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - reviewed FINERACT's mark usage policy and had no concerns - approved an external event for CASSANDRA - approved PNS for CELEBORN * REGISTRATIONS Worked with counsel to maintain the FLINK, PDFBOX, KAFKA and CASSANDRA registrations in the US. Worked with counsel to progress the FINERACT application. The BEAM and DOLPHINSCHEDULER registrations in the US completed. Worked with counsel and the NUTTX PMC to transfer the NUTTX mark to the ASF. * INFRINGEMENTS Contacted Namecheap regarding a phishing site using a copy of the HADOOP website and the site was promptly taken down. Provided advice to FINERACT regarding an infringement that has now been resolved. Directed counsel not to oppose a 3rd party registration that counsel thought might conflict with one of our existing registrations.
Covering the period November 2022 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - one request to use the IOTDB mark for an event - one request to use the FLINK mark for an event - approved podling name searches for STREAMPARK and KVROCKS - one request to the SPARK logo in a presentation - one request to use the DORIS mark for an event - one request to use the NETBEANS logo for a sticker * REGISTRATIONS Continued to work with counsel to transfer the DORIS marks in China. Worked with counsel and the NUTTX PMC to transfer for the US mark to the ASF. Started the process to register FINERACT in the US. The registration for PDFBOX in the EU completed. The court in China has ruled in favour of the ASF and overturned the CNIPA refusal to register APACHE in China. The CNIPA will now re-examine its decision. * INFRINGEMENTS Obtained control of the APACHE scope in the NPM registry. Resolved an issue with a company incorrectly claiming the ASF was a customer.
Covering the period October 2022 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - got to the bottom of how stickers that were denied approval ended up getting distributed at ApacheCon New Orleans (honest mistake by vendor - no further action required) - one request to approve designs for AIRFLOW branded swag - approved name search for WAYANG - one request to use the CASSANDRA mark for a series of events - one request to use various project logos in a book - one query regarding the use of the FLINK mark with an external event * REGISTRATIONS Started the registration process for GUACAMOLE. Restarted DOLPHINSCHEDULER registration in China. Continued to work with counsel and Baidu to transfer the DORIS marks to the ASF. * INFRINGEMENTS Reviewed information on a potentially conflicting new external registration and determined no action was required.
Covering the period September 2022 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - the query regarding the naming of Apache Wayang is still with counsel - approved four t-shirt designs including a project logo to be used for conference swag - approved one request to use multiple project logos in marketing material - approved one t-shirt design including the KAFKA logo to be used for internal use only - approved one t-shirt design including the IOTDB logo to be used for committer gifts - responded to an inquiry from a company that wanted to offer certifications where the charge was a donation to the ASF - updated the draft of the downstream distribution policy - declined a request to use ASF project logos as part of the logos of a series of software products - approved the use of our CASSANDRA mark with an external event - the KAFKA PMC updated their website so the mandatory navigation links were restored to the main navigation menu - approved the use of our TVM mark with an external event - referred an inquiry about creating merchandise to the relevant policy * REGISTRATIONS Worked with counsel to maintain our ACCUMULO registration in the US. Provided advice to LOGGING that resulted in a request to register LOG4J that has been passed to counsel for action. Directed counsel not to oppose a 3rd party registration that counsel thought might conflict with one of our existing registrations. Started a US registration for GUACAMOLE. Discussed with counsel options after a number of the ASSIGNMENTS for DOLPHINSCHEDULER in China were refused after the registrations failed. Worked with counsel and Cloudera to complete the transfer of IMPALA marks. Continued to work with counsel and Baidu to transfer the DORIS marks to the ASF. * INFRINGEMENTS Provided advice to LOGGING regarding a possible infringement by a user on Twitter. Provided advice to GUACAMOLE regarding a possible infringement by an external company.
Covering the period August 2022 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - the query regarding the naming of Apache Wayang is still with counsel - approved two requests to use project logos to refer to the project on commercial websites - approved one name search - approved one request to use project marks for an event - approved one request to use project marks within a commercial presentation - approved one request to use project marks within the material for educational course - declined a request to produce swag showing an ASF project logo and a commercial logo side-by-side - provided feedback on a draft site for an external event * REGISTRATIONS Worked with counsel to maintain our existing US registrations for BIGTOP, OFBIZ. Worked with counsel to progress with PDFBOX registration. Worked with counsel to progress the transfer of the DORIS marks to the ASF. Worked with counsel and Cloudera to complete the transfer of the IMPALA marks to the ASF. Discussed with counsel the possibility of registering some ASF marks in classes 41 and 42 in additional to class 9. * INFRINGEMENTS Provided advice to a project regarding a potentially infringing external product.
Covering the period July 2022 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - the query regarding the naming of Apache Wayang is still with counsel - one request to use KAFKA marks for external events - one request to create NETBEANS swag - provided advice to the LINKIS podling regarding suitability of the name - reviewed two proposed responses to enquiries to the OPENOFFICE PMC - one request to use ASF project logos on a "we use..." page - one request to use the TINKERPOP gremlin character * REGISTRATIONS Working with IMPALA PMC and Cloudera to complete updates of records at EUIPO for IMPALA marks. Our HADOOP registration has been renewed in the US. * INFRINGEMENTS Contacted a website that was incorrectly using the ASF logo to indicate that the ASF was using their service. Worked with the MXNET PMC on some potential naming issues with downstream distributions.
Covering the period June 2022 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - the query regarding the naming of Apache Wayang is still with counsel - 1 request to use project marks for an event - approved ShenYu and Sedona as suitable names - redirected a request for permission to use the logo and marks for a non-ASF project - provided advice to PLC4X regarding a tools page to recognize donated tooling licenses - provided feedback to ISIS on their name search for CAUSEWAY - provided advice to CASSANDRA regarding their application for the Grace Hopper Celebration Open Source Day 2022 - 1 request to use the SUBVERSION mark and logo in a book - provided advice to CASSANDRA regarding the use of project marks in a podcast managed by a community member Updated the TLP website branding requirements to add a requirement for a link to the ASF privacy policy. * REGISTRATIONS Work with counsel to maintain registrations for TOMCAT, HBASE, MANIFOLDCF, KAFKA and IMPALA. Discussed renewal options with the IMPALA PMC. * INFRINGEMENTS Provided advice to MXNET regarding a number of potential infringements. The work is being lead, from the podling, by one of the committers. It seems odd that a community member is trusted with this task but not with being on the PPMC. Requested the removal of the ASF logo from two sites incorrectly claiming use and/or endorsement of their products by the ASF. CASSANDRA addressed an issue of incorrect attribution of their marks on a web site. Discussed a proposed and potentially infringing use of our PDFBOX mark with the PMC and with counsel. Reviewed a potentially infringing Twitter account at the request of the MESOS PMC but nothing of concern was found.
Covering the period May 2022 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required - two requests to use various project logos on websites - one request to use project marks for an event - one request to use project marks in a presentation - provided advice to a project wanting to issue certificates of appreciation - provided advice to a project looking to utilize an offer to run their WeChat account on a day to day basis - provided advice on what the ASF would permit in terms of naming and logo for an external project that is part of the ecosystem around an ASF project - provided advice regarding the transfer of marks to the ASF as part of the incubator graduation process - provided advice for regarding the naming of the proposed FIRESTORM podling - provided advice regarding the use of ® or ™ - provided advice to a project regarding a potential rebrand of their slack workspace * REGISTRATIONS Worked with counsel to progress our APACHE registration for India. Worked with counsel to maintain our US registrations for FLINK, PDFBOX * INFRINGEMENTS The Kafka PMC continued to progress the addressing of a number of infringements.
Covering the period April 2022 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS It was a quiet month. I will be updating the formal TLP website requirements [1] to additionally require a link to the ASF privacy policy. Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - one query from a PMC regarding naming of an event they are running - one query regarding using project logos to refer to projects - provided advice to a project regarding a potential community edition of a book about the project * REGISTRATIONS Worked with counsel to progress the transfer of the DOLPHINSCHEDULER marks to the ASF. * INFRINGEMENTS Two more potential infringements have been identified by the OpenOffice PMC. [1] https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/pmcs#navigation
Covering the period March 2022 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Provided advice on the use Java package names in a log4j v1 fork - Provided advice to the OpenOffice PMC regarding a request to use the software in a TV series - Provided advice regarding the use of ASF logos in presentations - Approved the use of project marks for an event - Provided advice regarding the use of ASF logos on websites - Discussed potential changes to the event approval process with VP Conferences - Provided advice on acceptable naming options for downstream distribution of ASF products under a different license - Provided advice on naming of licenses derived from the ALv2 - Provided advice regarding the use of ASF logos in other products - Passed a query regarding the use of KAFKA in the name of a related product to the KAFKA PMC - Provided advice to the Infrastructure team regarding gaining control of the Apache namespace at npmjs.com - Provided advice regarding approval for events that use ASF marks * REGISTRATIONS Instructed counsel to allow the TAJO registration in the US to lapse. Worked with counsel to start the process of transferring the DORIS marks to the ASF. Worked with counsel to maintain our ACCUMULO and OFBIZ registrations in the US. We are waiting to here the judge's decision regarding our appeal of the APACHE registration in China. * INFRINGEMENTS Provided advice to MINA regarding a potential infringement. Provided advice to CASSANDRA regarding LinkedIn groups. Worked with BEAM and FLINK PMCs to address potential infringements in an external website.
Covering the period February 2022 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - One request to use project logos on a webpage - One request to use project logos on stickers - One request to use the CASSANDRA mark for an event - Provided advice on how to correctly use of ASF marks on a website - Provided advice on what would be an acceptable use of ASF marks in Google ads - Provided advice to the GUACAMOLE PMC regarding trademark registrations - Approved name searches for: KYUUBI - Provided advice on how to correctly use of ASF marks in a YouTube video - Provided advice to ARROW regarding logo design - One request to use project logos in a book * REGISTRATIONS The registration of APACHE in China is progressing with a court hearing taking place on 24 Feb. Worked with counsel to renew OFBIZ registration. Instructed counsel not to object to a potentially conflicting registration in India as the TAJO project has retired. * INFRINGEMENTS Continued work to remove infringing books sold by an Amazon marketplace seller. wave is addressing a potential infringement by a downstream distributor of our KAFKA and PULSAR marks. The KAFKA PMC completed addressing an issue with an external product. A site infringing our PDFBOX marks has been taken down as a result of us making a complaint to the hosting provider. Reportied a Twitter account infringing our marks to market cryptocurrency and the account was removed.
Covering the period January 2022 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - provided advice to LOGGING regarding the use of the org.apache Java package name in forks - approved SEATUNNEL as a suitable name - approved YUNIKORN as a suitable name - provided advice regarding advertising for funding to work on ASF projects - provided advice for published article on LOG4J - responded to an external query regarding retaining the org.apache Java package name in a commercial fork * REGISTRATIONS Allowed registrations for BROOKLYN in class 38 and 42 in the EU and UK were allowed to lapse. We normally only register in class 9. Prompted the MAVEN PMC to consider requesting registration for MAVEN. Worked with counsel to arrange for the renewal of our HADOOP mark. Provided advice to DORIS on how to transfer marks to the ASF. * INFRINGEMENTS The KAFKA PMC continues to work to resolve a number of infringements that were reported previously. Supported CASSANDRA as they handled some minor issues on an external website. Responded to an enquiry regarding potential impersonation of CLOUDSTACK.
Covering the period December 2021 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - declined to sign a copyright release for a book and pointed the publisher to the terms of the ALv2 - approved a request to use the SPARK logo on a company's internal team t-shirt - provided advice to an external party regarding how to correctly refer to our products on their website including logo use - approved a t-shirt design using ASF logos intended to be given away at a meetup - one request to approve an event using ASF marks * REGISTRATIONS Provided advice to the DORIS podling on how to transfer previously registered marks to the ASF. Worked with counsel to complete paperwork necessary to maintain registrations for CTAKES, TOMCAT, HBASE, MANIFOLDCF. Working with BEAM PMC to identify a suitable description of goods for their in progress trademark application. * INFRINGEMENTS The KAFKA PMC responded to a query regarding a potential infringement. It was a false alarm. The KAFKA PMC continues to work to resolve a number of infringements that were reported previously.
Covering the period November 2021 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - three requests to use project logos on a website - clarified for a KAFKAwhen we require attribution of our marks and when we require a disclaimer - one request to reference project documentation in a university course - rejected a DCMA notice for multiple reasons - not least of which being we neither own nor control the domain in question - one request to use screenshots from project documentation in a book - one request to use project marks on internal company swag - provided advice to OOZIE regarding acceptable names of projects that support the OOZIE community * REGISTRATIONS OPENOFFICE registrations in China have been renewed. Registration has started for DOLPHINSCHEDULER in the US and China. Continued to work with counsel and BEAM PMC to progress the registration of APACHE BEAM. Counsel continue to progress the update of registered address for registrations. * INFRINGEMENTS Continued to work with PINOT PMC to address potential infringements of their mark. Provided advice to FINERACT regarding potential infringements of their marks. Continued to work with OPENOFFICE and counsel regarding infringement of their marks. Continued to work with FLINK and counsel to address infringements in China. Reported additional infringements for Amazon marketplace seller and responded to various follow-up emails that resulted from the report.
Covering the period October 2021 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - one request to sign a release to use material in a book was declined and the publishers pointed towards the ALv2 that covered the material in question - one request, granted, to produce a small number of t-shirts including ASF project marks for internal use - approved one event * REGISTRATIONS While working to address the infringements by an Amazon Marketplace seller, it was noticeable that a registration for APACHE in India would be helpful. I therefore instructed counsel to start the process of registering APACHE in India. Worked with counsel and the BEAM PMC to determine a way ahead for a registration for BEAM. * INFRINGEMENTS Continued to work with FLINK PMC and counsel to address potential infringements in China. Provided advice to CLOUDSTACK regarding a potential infringement. Provided advice to KAFKA regarding potential infringements.
Covering the period September 2021 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - requested further details regarding a request to use various project logos within a software product - redirected an enquirey regarding permitted technologies for hosting TLP websites to the infrastructure team - approved a request to use various project logos within a software product - approved two events - approved a merchandise request * REGISTRATIONS Continued to work with counsel to change the address of the ASF associated with our registrations. On the advice of counsel reviewed a new third party registration for FLEX for potential conflicts. None were found. After feedback from counsel, started a discussion with the BEAM PMC regarding options for the US registration. * INFRINGEMENTS Continued to work with counsel and the FLINK PMC to address various infringements in China. Instructed counsel to send a letter regarding an infringement of OPENOFFICE. Reported a large scale infringement of multiple ASF marks by an Amazon market place seller to Amazon. Some items have been removed from sale but there are more that still need to be reported. Provided advice to FINERACT regarding a potential infringement.
Covering the period August 2021 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Counsel has reviewed and made recommendations for the draft downstream distribution policy - approved a request to reference ASF marks in a SaaS offering - denied a request to use ASF marks in a 'partners' listing - approved an event for Pulsar - reviewed email thread related to branding concerns with a project - where the concern was valid, the PMC has the issue in hand - denied a request to use ASF marks in a software product name - one approved a request to use the FLINK logo on merchandise - approved LINKIS as a podling name - approved a request to use project logos in a UI to refer to loading data in that project's format - requested more information regarding a request to use project logos in a UI * REGISTRATIONS The assignment of the APISIX mark in China has completed. * INFRINGEMENTS Counsel has provided a draft letter to address an infringement of OPENOFFICE. Counsel has provided a draft letter and draft text to use with Amazon to address a large scale infringement of multiple ASF marks by an Amazon market place seller. Working with counsel and the FLINK PMC to collect the documentation necessary for the PMC to address various infringements in China. Continued thanks to clr who has been working with counsel to provide the paperwork necessary to progress the registration of our APACHE mark in China.
Covering the period July 2021 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - one complaint about use of our software however the use was within the terms of the ALv2 - one query regarding the branding of a training course for KAFKA - one request to purchase a domain name associated with BROOKLYN - one request to purchase a mark associated with PREDICTIONIO - two queries regarding referencing ASF marks in SAAS offerings * REGISTRATIONS Provided information to counsel to allow our BEAM registration to progress. The APISIX registration in the US has completed. * INFRINGEMENTS Provided support to FLINK PMC who are addressing various infringements in China. Continued to provide support to KAFKA as they address a number of potential infringements.
Covering the period June 2021 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - one request to use project logos on a t-shirt (not merchandise) - reviewed a notice from the EUIPO regarding a potentially conflicting registration (no concerns) - one request to use project logos within another software application to refer to the respective projects - one request to use project logos on a t-shirt associated with a training course - one query regarding using a project name and screenshots in a book - one request to use project marks for an external event * REGISTRATIONS The APACHE registration in China continues to progress. * INFRINGEMENTS KAKFA received a notice of several potential infringements and has reached out as appropriate to address them. Obtained the registration certificate for FLINK to help the PMC address some potential infringements.
Covering the period May 2021 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD * OPERATIONS It has been a quiet month. Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Two requests to sell swag for a project - One request to use marks in a commercial training course - One request to use project logos in marketing material - One request to use project logos a blog The migration of the foundation website highlighted a need to update our process for providing a current listing of ASF marks. * REGISTRATIONS Thanks again to clr for his continued work with counsel to provide the necessary paperwork for our APACHE registration in China to proceed. * INFRINGEMENTS Nothing to report.
Covering the period April 2021 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Approved name search for HOP - Approved use of STORM project logo for a blog post - Provided feedback on proposed marketing material for two training courses. - Responded to two queries regarding potential infringement - Reviewed mail from EUIPO regarding potential conflict with new registration - One request to sell swag for a project - One query regarding a proposed corporate renaming that potentially conflicted with ASF marks * REGISTRATIONS Worked with counsel to progress our national application for APACHE (this is a backup to our WIPO application). Continued to progress paperwork necessary to record the ASF's change of address for our existing registrations. The US registrations for APISIX and BROOKLYN are progressing. * INFRINGEMENTS It has been good to see projects, particularly CASSANDRA and KAFKA proactively protecting their marks this month.
Covering the period March 2021 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD Brand Management will be over budget for the current FY. This is due to invoices for the previous FY being very (months) late. They were received and paid this FY and hence are recorded against this FY's budget. If Brand Management expenditure is tracked against date of invoice rather than the date the invoice was received, then both this FY and last FY (and the two FY's before that) are under budget. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - one request to use some of our logos on a website - one request to use our SPARK logo on a t-shirt - one request to use NETBEANS in a film - two requests to review an external training offering for ASF software - provided advice on how to reference our marks in a book Also: - clarified the wording of http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/ - reviewed 2 notices from the EUIPO regarding new applications that potentially conflicted with our marks. Nothing of concern was found. * REGISTRATIONS With special thanks to clr, we were able to provide the necessary paperwork to counsel to allow them to progress our APACHE registration in China. Allowed an application in class 42 that was transferred as part of a donation to lapse. * INFRINGEMENTS A report received regarding a possible infringement of our KAFKA mark was passed to the PMC for follow-up. Provided advice on how to handle an inaccurate trademark attribution in a book. Provided advice to FLINK and KAFKA regarding a potential infringements.
Covering the period February 2021 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - one request for logo usage on t-shirts - one copyright permission request to use material from STRUTS for a book was directed to the ALv2 - approved event requests for IGNITE and PULSAR - approved name searches for RATIS, EVENTMESH and INLONG - provided advice to PHOENIX on options for hosting tech talks - one request to use project logos on an external website * REGISTRATIONS Work with counsel and APISIX PMC to progress transfer of APISIX registrations in China to the ASF. Continued to work with counsel to complete the change of registered address for our registrations. Some of these are on hold as they require notarized paperwork. I expect to be in a position to obtain that in the next few months. Counsel has identified a mechanism that will allow us to proceed with the application to register APACHE in China without requiring paperwork signed by all 9 directors, notarized and then legalized. * INFRINGEMENTS Provided advice to KAFKA regarding a potential infringement. With help from Willem Jiang and Sheng Wu, had a domain registration in China that was using a domain based on one of our marks to host pornography removed.
Covering the period January 2021 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Discussed the possibility of including an ® when we refer to APACHE in our license. The conclusion was not to pursue this at this time. - Provided guidance to GOBBLIN on using non-ASF logos on the project website. - Rejected a PNS request due to an existing project with the same name. - Worked with counsel and the PMC to provide a custom (slightly relaxed) naming policy for KAFKA clients and connectors. - Rejected a trademark infringement claim for a non-ASF website that happened to be hosted on httpd. - Approved the PNS for DolphinScheduler - Approved external events for PULSAR - Responded to a question regarding whether or not ACTIVEMQ was a registered trademark * REGISTRATIONS Continued to work with counsel to update the official ASF address associated with our registrations. Worked with counsel and the PMC to progress the assignments for APISIX in China and SERVICECOMB in the US and EU. Worked with counsel to progress the registration of APACHE in China. I have requested, but not yet received, options for alternative approaches for providing the proof of my authority as VP, Brand Management should it be required. * INFRINGEMENTS Provided advice to ACTIVEMQ on options for handling a fork considered to be infringing. Provided advice to ACCUMULO regarding options for handling a website considered to be infringing.
Covering the period December 2020 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD - None * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - provided advice to AIRFLOW regarding external entities providing swag for committers - approved name search for GOBBLIN - approved external events for PULSAR - approved a request to create stickers using the SHIRO logo - provided quarterly report content to Press & marketing - approved a request to use LOGGING logos in a book - approved a request to use the ASF logo when referring to the ASF in a webinar and blog post - started the process of changing our registered address for our trademark registrations - requested advice from counsel for KAFKA regarding their wish to adopt a more relaxed naming policy for a limited set of extensions * REGISTRATIONS Worked with counsel to progress the registrations for: - BROOKLYN in the US - APACHE FLINK in China - APACHE in China Received notification the the APACHE IGNITE registration has completed in China. * INFRINGEMENTS Provided advice on how to handle a potential minor infringement in a dormant GitHub project.
Covering the period November 2020 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Provided advice on branding for an external YouTube channel focused on an Apache project - Provided advice to SUPERSET on branding of external docker images - Provided advice to the organisers of proposed events focused on MXNET and PULSAR - Provided advice to an external organisation wishing to use the MAVEN and KAFKA logos - Providing naming advice to a project considering an application to the incubator - Directed a publisher and blogger towards our FAQ for using our marks - Provided advice to GEODE regarding outdated translations of project documentation - sebb and wave cleaned up the meta-data associated with the podling name search JIRAs * REGISTRATIONS Worked with counsel to progress the registrations for: - APACHE in China - BROOKLYN in the US * INFRINGEMENTS - Provided advice regarding the naming of a derivative of the ALv2
Covering the period October 2020 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Approved Podling Name Ssearch for Apache Ozone - Responded to a query regarding the use of project logos in a presentation - Responded to a query regarding the use of project logos in a book - Responded to a query from the ASF press team regarding the registered marks associated OPENOFFICE - Responded to two queries regarding the use of project marks for different external events - Provided advice to a project regarding the use of logos to list the non-ASF products with which the ASF product is compatible - Provided advice regarding the use of a project's mark for |YouTube content - Provided advice to a project regarding the use of the project's marks and externally provided Docker images - Responded to a query regarding the use of project logos in marketing material - Provided support to KAFKA as they discussed possible naming conventions for external products that integrate with KAFKA * REGISTRATIONS Started the process to register APISIX in the US. * INFRINGEMENTS
Covering the period September 2020 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Provided advice regarding a potential name conflict - One request to use a project logo on an external site to refer to the project. - Responded to a query from counsel regarding the registration of a potentially conflicting mark. - Provided advice to TVM regarding the naming of their discussion forum. - Approved one request to use a project mark for a conference. - Responded to queries from two separate parties looking to provide one or more of our projects "as a service". - Two requests to use a project logo in an external software product to refer to the project. - Provided advice to ECHARTS regarding the hosting of a "gallery" site. The branding issues were resolved but associated community issues were not. - One request to use a project logo in a book to the project. * REGISTRATIONS Worked with counsel to progress the "APACHE FLINK" registration. Started the registration process for APISIX. Worked with counsel and PMC to progress the "BROOKLYN" registration. * INFRINGEMENTS
Covering the period August 2020 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS A quiet month. I was away for the start of the month any busy with $work on my return. - Approved one podling name search - Responded to a query regarding OpenUsageCommons - Responded to one query regarding rescheduling a 3rd party conference - Work with the Treasurer to resolve an issue with a missing invoice There were an additional 5 queries that arrived in August that did not receive a response until early September. They will be included in next month's report. * REGISTRATIONS Worked with counsel to progress a registration for FLINK in China. * INFRINGEMENTS
Covering the period July 2020 * ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Provided advice to FLINK and OPENWHISK regarding the use of the project's mark in an non-ASF-owned domain name. - Provided advice to HADOOP PMC regarding merchandise that parodied the HADOOP name and logo. - Provided advice to KAFKA regarding options for naming components of the broader KAFKA ecosystem that are not created by the ASF. - Responded to a question regarding ALv2, derivative works and trademarks - Provided advice to an external party who wished to refer to SPARK in their blog. - Provided advice to an external party who wished to use project logos in their own product's UI to help identify supported data formats. - Provided advice to an external party who wished to use project names and logos in their marketing material. - Provided advice to an external party who wished to reuse product documentation from a number of ASF projects. * REGISTRATIONS Worked with BROOKLYN PMC to provide information required by counsel to progress the US registration. Worked with counsel to progress our APACHE registration in China. The transfer of the DRUID marks from Imply to the ASF is now complete. The FLINK registration in the EU is now complete. The APACHE registration in the EU is now complete. The APACHE IGNITE registration in China is now complete. * INFRINGEMENTS Worked with SLING to progress an outstanding issue towards resolution.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Covering the period June 2020 Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Provided advice to DRILL regarding naming options for downstream distributions. - One request to use project logos in training material to identify the Apache software running on server instances. - One request to use project logos in a presentation for a conference to identify the Apache software running on server instances. - Responded to one query regarding the use of the "powered by" form of naming. - Responded to an internal query regarding a potential naming conflict. - Responded to a query from MXNet regarding naming of downstream releases. - Confirmed requested changes had been made regarding a request to use an ASF mark for an external event. - Provided advice to the infrastructure team regarding trademark issue. - Provided an initial view of the name PEGASUS to enable podling resources to be created. - Provided advice to a IGNITE regarding a request to use the project name in a URL - Responded to a query about taking an ASF project and rebranding it to create a derived product. - Responded to a request to use the KAFKA logo in a software product to refer to identify KAFKA data sources. * REGISTRATIONS The CLOUDSTACK registration is the US is complete. Worked with counsel to progress the BROOKLYN registration in the US. * INFRINGEMENTS An potential infringement of OPENOFFICE has been identified and has been added to the infringements currently being worked by the PMC. A minor issue related to DRUID was identified and has been passed to the DRUID PMC for resolution. Working with HADOOP regarding a possible infringement.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None * OPERATIONS Covering the period May 2020 Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - two requests to use our logos in documentation - one request to use a project logo to refer to the project in a UI - one request to re-use images from a project wiki - one request for naming advice for a prospective TLP - one podling name search was withdrawn - five podling name searches were approved - provided the Brand Management content for the annual report - one request to use Apache source code as an example in a book * REGISTRATIONS The FLINK registration has been accepted by the WIPO. * INFRINGEMENTS
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None * OPERATIONS Covering the period April 2020 Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - one request use a project logo in an academic publication` - two requests to use project logos on a website - one request to use project logos within documentation - two requests to use project logos within a software product - two requests to use a project's mark for an external event - one request to re-use images from a project wiki - one query regarding external product naming - amended the policy on required navigation links on TLP sites to allow additional variations for the "thanks" link - approved one podling name search - provided advice to GROOVY regarding links to 3rd-party builds - provided advice to TVM regarding listing organisations using the project * REGISTRATIONS The process to transfer control of dubbo.io to the ASF is ongoing. * INFRINGEMENTS
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD For information only. One of the event requests listed below was from my employer. There was a potential issue due to a date conflict with ApacheCon. To avoid any potential conflict of interest, the decision on whether to approve the event (it was approved) was made by VP, Conferences. * OPERATIONS Covering the period March 2020 Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - discussed with counsel a new requirement (which was then dropped) from the USTPO to provide an email address for the trademark owner - two requests to use one or more project logos on external web sites - one request to use extracts from a project's documentation in a masters thesis - four requests to use project marks for external events - one query from KAFKA regarding having multiple logos for the project - one query from an external party regarding the requirements (none) between providing training for one of our projects and being listed on that project's commercial support providers page - Jim Jagielski resigned from the Brand Management committee. We thank him for his contributions. - provided advice to SHARDINGSPHERE regarding listing of logos of companies that use Apache ShardingSphere on the podling's website - approved the podling name search for APISIX * REGISTRATIONS The Russian registrations for OPENOFFICE.ORG and OPENOFFICE.ORG & Design have now been recorded as transferred to the ASF. The transfer of the SERVICECOMB mark in China to the ASF is progressing. * INFRINGEMENTS Nothing to report.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Covering the period January 2020 Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Approved three podling name searches - Continued to work on the downstream distribution policy - Approved one use of our logos to identify our products within third-party products / websites - Provided advice on naming an external product to avoid infringement - Approved one use of logos on t-shirts - Approved one external event - Provided advice regarding correct attribution of ASF marks in an external white paper - The Brand Management Google account (formerly used for web site analytics has been deleted) * REGISTRATIONS - Started the process to register FLINK in China and the EU - The process to transfer the SERVICECOMB marks continues * INFRINGEMENTS Provided advice to BEAM regarding a potential infringement. KAFKA has resolved an issue related to external product naming.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Covering the period January 2020 Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Updated event policy regarding date conflicts at request of VP, Conferences - Continued to work on a draft policy for how we allow providers of services - Continued to work on a draft policy for downstream distribution of Apache projects - Provided input to FY21 budget (8% reduction to FY20) - Signed an agreement with Alibaba to transfer dubbo.io to the ASF to reference our use of those services in their marketing material - Signed a co-existence agreement for DRUID. - Approved two uses of our logos to identify use of our products - Provided advice to a podling regarding trademark assignment - Provided advice to a podling regarding the trademark registration process - Approved use of a project logo on a t-shirt for personal use - Provided advice to a project regarding a name change - Provided advice regarding allocating speaking slots to sponsors at an external event using our marks - Approved the use of our marks in a book - Providing advice to a project on including links to external support services on the project website - Provided advice to CASSANDRA regarding the development of guidelines for the use of the project name in a managed service offering - Approved one podling name search - Approved one external event * REGISTRATIONS - Started the process to register FLINK in China and the EU * INFRINGEMENTS KAFKA is taking the lead on a couple of issues related to external product naming.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Covering the period December 2019 Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Approved 4 podling name searches - Continued to work with DRUID - Approved 2 events - Provided registration advice to SUPERSET - Responded to 3 request to use logos and/or screenshots in 1 book, 1 scientific paper and 1 web-site - Updated the 3rd party event policy at the request of VP, Conferences - Continued to work with DUBBO - Contributed to the discussion on reducing the likelihood of renames due to the work it generates for infra - Provided advice to FLINK on 'official' social media accounts and on registration - Contributed to the ALC / meet-up discussions in ComDev - Provided advice to WEEX - Provided advice to NUTTX - Started a discussion on providing guidance to external parties who want to publicise that and ASF project (or the ASF) uses their product / service * REGISTRATIONS None. * INFRINGEMENTS PMCs continue to work on resolving a range of issues.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Covering the period November 2019 Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Provided advice to FLINK regarding setting up an externally managed packages registry for the project. - Provided advice to IBM on acceptable uses of our logos to refer to our products within IBM products and documentation. - Approved the first Apache Local Chapter event. Discussions around setting up a framework for future events continues on ComDev. - Approved an event for Kafka, liaising with planners@ to adjust the dates to avoid ApacheCon. - Approved an event for Pulsar, liaising with planners@ to adjust the dates to avoid the proposed Roadshow. - Provided the Q2 report for Press and Marketing - Approved 1 Podling Name Search (STREAMPIPES) - Continued to provide advice to DRUID - Provided advice to WEEX regarding community managed sites using a domain name that includes our mark * REGISTRATIONS Instructed counsel to allow the OPENOFFICE.ORG registration in Norway to lapse. The registration of OPENOFFICE.ORG in India has been renewed. The registration for APACHE IGNITE in the US completed. The registration for APACHE in the US completed. * INFRINGEMENTS We received several reports related to OPENOFFICE. PMCs continue to work on resolving a range of issues.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Covering the period October 2019 Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Resolved 3 Podling name searches (PETRI, DORIS, SUBMARINE) - Redirected an enquiry about an ALv2 licensed font to the font owner - Request to reference Apache projects in a book - Use of R, TM and SM with PETRI - Naming of a training course for KAFKA - Use of KAFKA logo - Clarified that we don;t register marks for incubating projects - Produced the Q1 report for press and marketing - Declined to sign a license to use material in a book as the rights requested were either not ours to license or covered by the ALv2 Fixed a handful of syntax bugs on the brand web pages. Thanks to danielsh. Discussed whether a more formal process for direct to TLP name searches was required. No change is proposed. * REGISTRATIONS Redirected a SUBVERSION related renewal request to the correct trademark owner. Reviewed the domain transfer agreement for dubbo.io * INFRINGEMENTS
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Covering the period September 2019 Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Directed an external party to the JMETER PMC to discuss that communities views on discussing/announcing external add-ons on JMETER mailing lists - Approved one podling name search (ECHARTS) - Provided advice to ECHARTS podling regarding naming conventions for plugin ecosystems - Provided advice to FLINK regarding approval of an external T-Shirt design that incorporated the FLINK logo - Provided advice to three external parties regarding using our logos to identify ASF projects their product integrates with / is built on. - Directed ROCKETMQ to remove wording from their website that indicated that the project was producing 'Commerical Releases'. * REGISTRATIONS - Instructed counsel to file a registration for CLOUDSTACK on the principal register. - Instructed counsel to allow OPENOFFICE.ORG registration to lapse for Moldova. - Completed the trademark assignment paperwork for ICEBERG. * INFRINGEMENTS
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Covering the period August 2019 Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Provided advice on naming 3rd party produced tutorials for KAFKA and NIFI - Provided advice on using the powered by logo for GEODE - Provided advice to COUCHDB on ownership and management of non-ASF domains - Chased counsel regarding review of the transfer agreement for dubbo.io - Approved one podling name search (HUDI) - Provided advice to DUBBO regarding 3rd party appreciation gifts - Provided advice to a 3rd-party wanting to sell ASF project branded goods on RedBubble * REGISTRATIONS - OPENOFFICE.ORG has been renewed for the EU - Instructed counsel to allow OPENOFFICE.ORG registrations to lapse for Croatia, Serbia, Turkey and Bosnia & Herzegovina - Instructed counsel to renew OPENOFFICE.ORG registration for Russia - Chased counsel regarding the transfer of the OPENWHISK marks * INFRINGEMENTS
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Covering the period July 2019 Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Provided advice for a company wishing to use project logos in a UI. - Reviewed http://openwhisk.incubator.apache.org/trademarks.html - Referred a request for co-branded stickers using the APACHE logo to press and marketing. - Approved a request to use the FLINK mark for an event, highlighting the relatively new requirement for an anti-harassment policy. * REGISTRATIONS Directed counsel to renew OPENOFFICE.ORG in India. The IGNITE registration in the EU is now complete. Directed counsel to file the 8&15 declaration for HAWQ in the US. Directed counsel to file the 8&15 declaration for PREDICTIONIO in the US. * INFRINGEMENTS I was pleased to see the ACCUMULO PMC resolved an issue with a non-ASF controlled website without assistance from Brand Management.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Covering the period June 2019 It has been a fairly quiet month. Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Responded to an external request to produce FLINK apparel - Provided support to the DLAB podling regarding naming - Provided advice to a conference based around KYLIN - Explained to a potential Wikipedia contributor that use of our logos in the context of a page about the project would be nominative use - Provided advice to a conference based around KAFKA No progress on the draft policy for use of our marks by downstream distributions. * REGISTRATIONS - Continued to collate information to support our registration of APACHE IGNITE in China * INFRINGEMENTS
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Covering the period May 2019 Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Provided advice to SPARK, KAFKA and CASSANDRA PMCs regarding 3rd party product naming. - Provided advice to SKYWALKING PMC regarding a 3rd party event. Mainly ensuring an anti-harassment policy was in place. - Responded to an external request to use the HTTPD logo. No progress on the draft policy for use of our marks by downstream distributions. * REGISTRATIONS - Collated information to support our registration of APACHE IGNITE in China - Provided advice to DUBBO PMC regarding transfer of existing marks. - After consultation with the OPENOFFICE PMC, instructed counsel to renew the EU class 9 mark but allow the class 41 and 24 marks to lapse. * INFRINGEMENTS
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD Feedback on the draft downstream distribution policy welcome. It is essentially trying to document the status quo rather than set new policy. * OPERATIONS Covering the period April 2019 Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - 3 enquiries about using logos (APACHE,CASSANDRA, KAFKA) - 1 enquiry about using a derivative logo (HADOOP/SPARK) - approved 1 podling name (DATASKETCHES) - 1 enquiry about merchandise (BIG DATA) - 2 enquiries about screenshots (NETBEANS, HTTPD) - approved 2 3rd party events (HBaseCon Asia, BEAM summits) - 1 enquiry about a non-ASF product - 1 enquiry about use of an ASF mark in a unrelated, non-software use (SPARK) Pinged several PMCs regarding outstanding issues. A draft policy was produced for use of our marks by downstream distributions: http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/downstream.html * REGISTRATIONS - BROOKLYN have made the website changes and provided the information necessary for their registration to proceed - APACHE IGNITE has been provisionally refused in China due to a little known usage of "apache". We are working with counsel to appeal this. - We have received the paperwork to transfer the OPENWHISK marks. This needs to be completed and sent to counsel. * INFRINGEMENTS
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Covering the period March 2019 Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Worked with GEODE PMC on an event approval - Asked the IMPALA PMC to consider the prominence being given to commercial entities on the project homepage. The PMC decided to remove the references. - Worked with Confluent on the best way to maker clear that their KAFKA certification was not affiliated with the ASF. - Responded to a retrospective request to use the iBatis name in a port of iBatis to .NET. The request was withdrawn while it was being considered. It was clarified that the ASF was not concerned about the brief period where the iBatis name had been used. - Responded to a request to use project logos in a PhD thesis to refer to the respective projects. - Worked with the Tuweni podling to find a suitable name. Unusually, it took several iterations to identify a suitable name. - Provided a generic response to a generic request to use project logos in a book. - Responded to a request to use HTTPD related marks in external domain names. - Approved IoTDB podling name - At the request of VP Conferences, updated the events policy to require the use of an anti-harrassment policy either identical to ours or approved by us. - Approved SINGA podling name - Worked with BEAM PMC to approve two events. One is close to ApacheCon NA in both time and distance. The approval process has triggered discussions between the organisers and VP, Conferences on co-locating. - Responded to a request to use the JMETER logo to refer to our software in a YouTube video. - Responded to a request to use the HADOOP logo to refer to our software in a marketing publication. - Answered a query on naming from the DATASKETCHES podling. - Answered a query on using logos derived from project logos for non-ASF but related projects. - Provided advice to Confluent regarding a new product name. * REGISTRATIONS - Forwarded a request for information to the BROOKLYN PMC. - Review of the OPENWHISK transfer documentation has been completed. * INFRINGEMENTS - Responded to a query regarding soft toy HADOOP elephants on sale on Amazon. We had previously grated permission for this.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Covering the period February 2019 Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Provided advice on the process to transfer the HUDI mark - Agreed a way forward for DRUID with the podling. We will continue to seek a coexistence agreement but it won't block graduation - Use of project logos to represent projects - Approved 3 podling name (ICEBERG, FLAGON, ALEMBIC) - Declined 1 podling name (RAINBOW) - Approved use of project logo on stickers - Provided advice to GROOVY on draft crowdfunding page - Provided advice to the ZIPKIN podling on naming referring to other brands * REGISTRATIONS In line with the approach agreed with the Apache OpenOffice project, directed counsel to allow our OPENOFFICE.ORG registrations to lapse in Taiwan, Norway and South Korea. Worked with counsel to progress our APACHE registration. Worked with counsel to progress our IGNITE registration. Working with counsel and IBM to transfer OPENWHISK marks. Working with counsel and Huawei to transfer SERVICECOMB marks. * INFRINGEMENTS
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Updated the guidance for the mandatory links to cover the use of http / https / protocol relative links. Recommendations have been provided but the final choice remains with the PMCs. Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Provided guidance on using our logos within an external software product as a means to identify the type of data source - Approved 3 podling names (PINOT, UNOMI, HUDI) - Provided guidance on using Apache project names in titles and abstracts for a conference - Provided a pointer to Sally's excellent guidance for referring to a project's founders. - Provided guidance on using Apache project logos on external websites. * REGISTRATIONS OPENOFFICE is now registered in the US. * INFRINGEMENTS The MXNET podling addressed an issue with product naming in conference session titles and abstracts. The CAMEL PMC gained control of the @ApacheCamel twitter account. The KAFKA PMC addressed some issues with conference session abstracts. Work continues to address a number of potential infringements.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - Approved use of marks for Flink Forward China - Approved use of logos in a book on Apache MAVEN - Approved use of images from Apache TINKERPOP in training material - Updated link policy to be explicit that http, https or protocol relative links were acceptable for required links and switched to the recommended relative links for the policy page - Approved use of logos for a website offering services for the associated projects Provided input to the next 5-year budget round. * REGISTRATIONS Started the process to register IGNITE in the EU and China. Started to work with Apache ICEBERG on trademark transfer. * INFRINGEMENTS Work continues to address a number of potential infringements. A number of EU applications that conflicted with our FLEX registration have been successfully challenged resulting in amendments to those applications to avoid the conflicts.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Responded to the following queries, liaising with projects as required: - naming of local user group - guidelines for 'founding individuals' (thanks Sally for providing the answer we could point to) - using logos in a presentation - Kafka Summit * REGISTRATIONS No new registrations. Worked with counsel on responses to office actions for a number of in-progress registrations. * INFRINGEMENTS Work continues to address a number of potential infringements.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD * OPERATIONS Responded to a query on the trademark transfer process for podlings. Dave Fisher (wave) has been progressing podling name searches with 6 resolved this month. Approved two requests to use project logos in books/presentations and one request to create an Apache users group. Provided advice to the Spark PMC. * REGISTRATIONS CLOUDSTACK is now registered in the UK. * INFRINGEMENTS Work continues to address a number of potential infringements. The Spark PMC resolved an issue with a GitHub project.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Provided advice to SPARK regarding a potential naming conflict. Responded to 1 request (logo) to related to nominative use of our marks. There are currently 26 tasks being tracked/monitored by the brand management team. * REGISTRATIONS The transfer of the NETBEANS mark in the EU has been recorded by the EUIPO. The US transfer is still in progress. * INFRINGEMENTS Work continues to address a number of potential infringements. The Hadoop PMC identified and resolved naming issues with a major cloud vendor.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Provided advice to SPARK regarding the naming the extensions listed on their web site. Responded to 6 requests (5 logos, 1 name) related to nominative use of our marks. Provided advice to MAHOUT regarding a naming potential conflict. Approval was granted for the BEAM summit. There are currently 26 tasks being tracked/monitored by the brand management team. * REGISTRATIONS The agreement to transfer the NETBEANS marks has been signed and is now with Oracle's counsel to progress the transfer. The draft agreement for the transfer of the SERVICECOMB registrations is being reviewed. The work to transfer the BROOKLYN marks to the ASF appears to have fallen though the cracks. It is being restarted. * INFRINGEMENTS Work continues to address a number of potential infringements.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Confirmed that a proposed use of OPENOFFICE screenshots was nominative and therefore acceptable. Directed the HAWQ project towards Sally for advice on acceptable language when referring to project 'creators'. Directed separate enquiries about setting up sites to support KAFKA and TINKERPOP to the relevant PMC. Provided advice to ARROW regarding the ability to claim component names as trademarks. Approved use of Apache marks for MESOSCON. There are currently 32 tasks being tracked/monitored by the brand management team. * REGISTRATIONS A draft agreement to assign the NETBEANS marks has been received and passed to our lawyers for review. Work continues on the transfer of the SERVICECOMB registrations. The OPENOFFICE registration for Argentina is due for renewal and will be allowed to lapse. * INFRINGEMENTS
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Advised SPARK that there were no branding concerns if the project wanted to adopt logo variants for Pride. Provided advice to an external entity on use of TM / (R) with Apache project names. Directed an enquiry on image re-use to the relevant project (STORM). Advised KAFKA regarding an external request to use a domain name that included the project name. Answered an external query about claiming compatibility with various projects. Advised ACCUMULO that there were no branding concerns with some proposed stickers and t-shirts. There are currently 40 tasks being tracked/monitored by the brand management team. The majority of the questions are being handled by the VP. Longer term, I want to try and expand the group of people that are comfortable doing this. * REGISTRATIONS Worked with SUBVERSION to determine whether to renew to registration in Japan (answer: no). * INFRINGEMENTS Provided advice to the HAWQ PMC regarding a potential infringement.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Approved one event for GEODE. Answered external questions regarding how to refer to Apache marks in one textbook, in one software product, in one presentation and on one website. Provided copy for the ASF Annual Report. Approved one Podling Name Search and provided feedback on another. Provided advice to ServiceComb regarding trademark transfer and graduation. There are currently 36 tasks being tracked/monitored by the brand management team. * REGISTRATIONS Registrations have been submitted in the US for APACHE, OPENOFFICE and APACHE IGNITE. Worked with the Beam PMC to provide direction to our lawyers regarding an office action associated with our application for BEAM. * INFRINGEMENTS Provided advice to the Hive PMC regarding a potential infringement. Outstanding issues being progressed by the Impala PMC have been satisfactorily resolved.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS A request was received for a logo to use to represent httpd. It has been passed to the PMC who are discussing options. Google Analytics has been removed from the Brand pages as it wasn't used and removing it was simpler than figuring out what needed to be done to make it GDPR compliant. Discussed the possibility of allowing additional project content to be hosted at sites other than *.apache.org. No change in policy at this time. Merchandise request for GEODE. Passed to PMC for final approval. Event requests for GEODE and ACCUMULO. Passed to PMC for final approval. The GEODE event overlaps with ApacheCon. It is being hosted as a side-event at a larger conference so such conflicts can be difficult to avoid. The organisers will be asked to co-ordinate on dates sooner for future events to try and avoid this. Usage requests (books) for MAVEN and OPENOFFICE. Both approved. The GMail based tracking system for open issues continues to work well. There are currently 24 open issues across 14 PMCs * REGISTRATIONS Started process of registering OPENOFFICE (rather than OPENOFFICE.ORG). This follows on from previous discussions with the OpenOffice PMC regarding long term strategy for registrations. A notice of an office action was received for our BEAM registration. Our response is being discussed with the PMC. * INFRINGEMENTS Discussed potential infringements with Spark, Maven, Cassandra and OpenOffice with the relevant PMCs. Most were non-issues. Those that were are being followed up with the relevant PMC.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS The last month saw the first set of paperwork requiring the use of a Notary Public. I now have a much better handle on the costs, which are less than $200. Given such paperwork is only expected a few times a year, I don't plan to put in place any process to enable it to be signed by someone in the US. Approval was granted for using Apache owned marks in event names for KAFKA, NETBEANS, SPARK, HBASE and SERVICECOMB. Approval was granted for merchandise using various Apache owned marks including ACCUMULO. Community members reported problems creating content on Wikipedia for our projects due to misplaced concerns from some editors regarding copyright infringement. I reached out to clarify that our license permits the uses in question. Confirmed that project documentation (including images) is provided under the ALv2 unless otherwise stated. (I'm not aware of any exceptions - just being cautious). Discussion has started around re-wording the current policy for required links to be more flexible w.r.t. http vs. https. Currently, a strict reading of the policy is that all links should be http. * REGISTRATIONS We have received a demand for costs amounting to €650 from the existing owner of a BROOKLYN trademark in the EU relating to their opposition to our attempt to register BROOKLYN in the EU. I approved this for payment. More generally, I have noticed a tendency for donated projects to have a wider range of registrations than the ASF would typically apply for. * INFRINGEMENTS There are currently 10 PMCs working on resolving infringements by external parties. Brand Management is providing support as required. I have sent a C&D letter on behalf of one of our projects. Various mailing lists were hit with spam from "Maven - The World's Largest Micro-Consulting Platform". Concerns regarding the use of Maven were raised with the Maven PMC who assessed that no action is required at this time.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS The transition of the role of VP Brand from Shane Curcuru to Mark Thomas is complete. The new GSuite based issue tracking process (modelled after the process used by the Security Team) is up and running and working well so far. All mail to trademarks@ dating back to 1 June 2017 has been loaded into GSuite and has been reviewed for outstanding issues. Out of ~270 threads since then there are ~25 current issues. All of these are up to date and are waiting on action from (P)PMC, external parties etc. to progress them. An overdue invoice (we had no record of the original) was identified and paid. Contact details were clarified and subsequent invoices have been received correctly. David Fisher (wave) has joined the Brand Management committee. Jukka Zitting (jukka) and Upayavira (upayavira) resigned from the Brand Management committee. I've noticed a more than expected level of off-list communication from both inside and outside the foundation. Nearly all of it belongs on list and I am re-directing it to the relevant list as it arrives. As this is my first report as VP Brand, I'd welcome feedback on the content and level of detail provided. * REGISTRATIONS A letter of understanding has been signed with the Eclipse Foundation allowing Eclipse to use the name Jakarta EE as the new name for Java EE. The OpenOffice PMC have reviewed their existing trademark registrations and proposed a plan for future registrations and renewals. This is a very welcome action and the plan is now under discussion.
WHEREAS, the Legal Affairs Committee of The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) expects to better serve its purpose through the periodic update of its membership; and WHEREAS, the Legal Affairs Committee is an Executive Committee whose membership must be approved by Board resolution. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the following contributors be added as a Legal Affairs Committee member: Shane Curcuru <curcuru@apache.org> Mark Thomas <markt@apache.org> Special Order 7B, Update the Legal Affairs PMC per discussions related to Brand & Trademarks, was approved by Unanimous Vote of the directors present.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD (continuing issue) The number of PMC and external requests, plus required coordination with our counsel for PMC-requested trademark registration services coming in continues to exceed the available volunteer expertise and time by a significant amount. Separately, we have recently turned down several PMC requests for registration services due to the currently limited budget. Mark Thomas has stepped up his volunteer time significantly and has been handling many operational tasks this month - many thanks to him. We hope to have some organizational changes that may improve the ability to handle the workload in the coming month. * OPERATIONS Mark has been handling the majority of operational questions this month. There were also several lengthy threads with questions or varied opinions on several incoming questions, permissions, or trademark law questions that required research for the responses. The Eclipse Foundation requested permission to consider using the JAKARTA name for their new JavaEE.Next project, which they are currently holding a contest to choose the final name. We have agreed preliminarily to sign a consent agreement clarifying the rights of both organizations, as well as ensuring that Eclipse's future website will include an acknowledgement of our Apache Jakarta project, which has been in the Attic for some years, but nonetheless was an important source of Java-related software in the past. Overall public impressions of the new use of JAKARTA by Eclipse are positive. Website Analytics shows a slight uptick in traffic overall, but not notable changes from past sources or behaviors. Chris Mattmann provided some interesting perspectives from both an outside trademark lawyer, as well as from our own counsel on the general legal strategies and costs that we face. * REGISTRATIONS & CONTRACTS Several renewals and changes of ownership registration were made, which necessitated a number of signed and notarized documents sent to counsel. Several PMC requests for renewals of project marks in countries with less obvious or sizeable developer communities were deemed not cost-efficient given the currently approved brand budget. This generated a notable amount of pushback and discussion from the PMCs involved.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD (continuing issue) The number of PMC and external requests coming in continues to exceed the available volunteer expertise and time by a significant amount. The current path is unsustainable, and is a disservice to the ASF, all of our projects, and the many well-behaved outside parties wishing to use Apache trademarks in their own work. * OPERATIONS The number of new requests from PMCs and external parties continues to far outstrip the available volunteer time and expertise, resulting in a growing backlog of questions to address. As an example, since the past board meeting there have been: - 3 emails to vp-brand@ with actionable information - 2 invoices - 2 informational emails to tm-registrations@ (reports of registration actions that we've requested) - 3 queries from counsel on tm-registrations@ requiring a response - 58 total emails to trademarks@: - 7 new queries/threads from PMCs, Members, or committers - 4 new queries/threads from outside parties - traffic on 3 threads dealing with policy questions - Overall, at least 15 outstanding queries, mostly from outside parties, awaiting a final answer to their questions about Apache trademark use Mark Thomas assisted in spotting and correcting a bug in one of our mailing list configurations. I co-presented "Trademarks In Open Source" at the PLI: Open Source Software 2017 - From Compliance to Cooperation law continuing education conference. Website Analytics shows the expected end-of-year dip in overall traffic and mostly the same kinds of trends as past months. * REGISTRATIONS & CONTRACTS To better document the entire registration process, including showing how much management and coordination is done for each mark applied for, I wrote up the 9 step lifecycle for that process (one out of 24 different processes managed in brand). No new registration news otherwise this month.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD (continuing issue) A few people have put forth specific and workable ideas for ways to improve how trademarks@ answers incoming questions. The specific ideas are helpful but will take time to code as volunteers - and still relies on volunteers showing up regularly to do the work of pushing answers. The broader question of ensuring our project communities are aware of our trademarks and policies around them - so that questions actually get raised to the right place - is still outstanding. I expect that part of the answer for this effectively will have to come out of some of the 5 year planning. The root issue is better mentoring and education in the Incubation process, as well as better support for existing TLPs. To better understand the Brand scope, I've created a full list of tasks/topics that the Brand Management Committee needs to perform on a regular basis, which includes 24 distinct kinds of tasks, requiring a variety of skill levels and timescales, including many tasks answering external inquiries. Similarly, I've done a thorough analysis of all emails on the trademarks@ list in the past year, trying to quantify who and how questions come in and get answered. This shows that over 40% of questions come from outside parties - typically vendors or other corporations using Apache brands. It also shows that the majority of answers to all questions come from Shane directly, something that is clearly unsustainable for a number of reasons. (To be continued next month, reviewing progress on specific ideas) * OPERATIONS Slower month than usual as we start the holiday season, which is good since I am spending more volunteer time working on improvement ideas than answering daily questions. Website Analytics shows average traffic. Approximately half are mobile vs. desktop. Oddly the great majority of hits still come from direct hits, not search results or referrals from any other tracked pages. This makes it difficult to understand how our readers got to our policy. * REGISTRATIONS & CONTRACTS Our MESOS application has been published to the USPTO Gazette and should be moving to final stage shortly after the board meeting, and the TEZ registration was formally granted. Successfully finished long-running negotiations and signed a formal consent agreement with a commercial vendor, which will now allow one of our project registration applications to move forward.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD (continuing issue) The core issue is that we are greatly under-serving our projects in terms of brand services. The lack of questions vs. number of popular projects we host shows many PMCs aren't properly policing their marks. Brand strategy - at a very high level, there are two long-term blockers with providing brand services to our projects currently: - Lack of reliable volunteers. We have only two volunteers in recent years who have shown a sustained interest and knowledge of our policies. Thus, nearly all the work is done by a single person. - Specialized knowledge. Being able to *accurately* answer most trademarks@ questions doesn't require law experience, but it does require both a thorough reading our our existing policies, as well as a keen attention to detail and consistent way of looking at each situation for the visible facts. This requires a notable amount of time to correctly answer questions for anyone who might volunteer. (To be continued next month, reviewing skills/work needed) * OPERATIONS A normal month, with more questions about use of Apache brands on merchandise. We are getting (a very small) amount of royalties on licensing Apache marks to Litographs, which is heartening to see. It's likely there are other vendors interested in similar arrangements. A large thread discussed appropriate boundaries for use of commercially licensed software in building and displaying the website for a newly created TLP. The specific questions were handled with Legal, but the larger question of prominent use of commercial software displayed on Apache project websites bears watching. Website Analytics shows a steady decline in overall hits - not sure what that's from, although since we don't have any campaign for awareness, it's hard to tell. Assistance planning outreach would be useful. The majority of hits are still direct to the primary policy page. * REGISTRATIONS & CONTRACTS HAWQ has finished transferring ownership to the ASF. The US registration of PREDICTIONIO has transferred, however a number of international applications are outstanding and will be evaluated for cost effectiveness. Our BROOKLYN registration in the EU was finally issued. Counsel continues to craft a contentious consent contract.
ISSUES FOR THE BOARD Travel and illness prevented much work on long-term strategy proposals yet. * OPERATIONS A quieter month, but one with deeper questions. In particular, we need more feedback from experienced users of package managers (rpm, yum, etc.) on the "Trademark policy vs. downstream/commercial distributions" thread, so we can create a comprehensive brand policy about specific naming of Apache-derived software in popular packaging formats. Website Analytics shows that most visitors are either direct to the URL, or are referred by a very small number of outside postings. This seems to indicate that most users don't think about trademarks unless some other site specifically sends them to our pages. In other news, one of the largest referral sites to the brand pages came from a "Certified Developer On Apache Spark" page at a popular website. Similarly, clarifications on non-Apache.org domain names need to be better shared among all projects. Infra was helpful in providing a list of all domain registrations the ASF holds, totaling about 50 domains. * REGISTRATIONS & CONTRACTS Counsel has been dealing with a higher volume of either registration/renewal paperwork, or with a handful of complex issues or agreements relating to applications recently which is now (after a delay due to billing cycles) showing up in the brand spending. KAFKA was issued a US registration. Renewals were processed for HADOOP, FLEX. New US applications were made for IGNITE, BEAM.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD Long term, the current model for providing trademark support to our projects is not working. The number of questions that are either already answered by documentation (meaning PMCs aren't aware of it) or that require trademark expertise (meaning Shane or counsel) continues to grow, as do the number of tasks requiring officer signature or interaction. Will be working over the next several months to propose potential alternatives; this is just a heads up that major improvements are needed over the next year. * OPERATIONS A busy month as various PMCs and companies (who ask us questions) return from summer holidays. A scam email about .cn domain registrations brings up a good point we should consider (additional volunteer energy willing): should we consider additional defensive domain registrations at common top level domains? We have cases of domain squatters using our brands to direct users elsewhere, and likely have more cases than are reported to us. Website Analytics still show the majority of users come to a direct link, are from Android or Windows (curious!), and start on the home page or /list page, and tend not to click through to many pages. I gave a new "Who Owns That Open Source Brand" talk at OSSummit, which was very well received and I think opened some eyes about the importance of trademarks. I've been invited to co-present "Trademarks in Open Source" at PLI's Open Source Software legal training conference again in December. * REGISTRATIONS & CONTRACTS A large number of renewals of existing registrations as well as several other assignments (MADLib, HAWQ) or legal agreements are still in process with counsel.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS A quiet month in terms of specific trademarks@ questions, although there are still some open questions to address. We still have not succeeded in attracting sufficient (or much at all, really) new volunteer energy or assistance in answering questions. Website Analytics show an average of about 120 users per day, the vast majority from direct URLs, not from links or referrals. * REGISTRATIONS & CONTRACTS A *very* busy month in terms of registration renewals and other legal paperwork related to registrations (more than a dozen issues), including several questions involving counsel about specific agreements around individual project marks. One bit of good news is our opposition to a conflicting FLEX mark in the EU was successful, with the other party deleting conflicting claims.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Surprisingly quiet month overall, fewer than normal incoming questions. Issues with some podlings approaching graduation without completing PODLINGNAMESEARCH processes were raised, and hopefully the IPMC will be working to ensure the incubating policies are clear and easy to follow. Thanks to John D. Ament for starting work on this. Worked with counsel to review a podling's trademark transfer agreement. Held a call with a large company to clarify a serious trademark request we had previously made to them, with a good conclusion. Website Analytics show that while the /foundation/marks page is the most often visited, the /list page of all trademarks is the second most visited page, surprisingly. Not enough data yet to see other notable trends, other than a fairly low number of hits overall. Thanks in general to the Accumulo, JMeter, and OFBiz PMCs who have each been doing a good job of managing some brand questions on their own recently. * REGISTRATIONS & CONTRACTS IMPALA's incoming transferred registration in Brazil was issued. A large number of renewals are coming up over the next 6 months, including many international registrations (which are notably more expensive to renew, typically).
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS Presented the popular Practical Trademark Law for FOSS Projects at ApacheCon Miami which drew some great questions; similarly the curated Apache Way track by a number of different speakers went amazingly well and got lots of questions throughout the day. http://shaneslides.com/2017/05/Practical-Trademark-Law/ Using automation from Whimsy, published a comprehensive list of both registered and unregistered trademarks claimed by the ASF, including all software releases that projects have created DOAP files from: https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/list/ Implemented Analytics with a vp-brand@ account for the /foundation/marks/* portion of the apache.org website, so we can better focus improvement efforts on how users are actually reading the documentation. Thanks to Mark Thomas for continuing to provide great answers to a variety of questions and for doing an excellent job with all issues around the Tomcat brand. * REGISTRATIONS & CONTRACTS Finalized registration paperwork relating to the incoming IMPALA and BROOKLYN trademarks, both donated during incubation. Continuing to work through legal issues related to registrations for two projects.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD None. * OPERATIONS A somewhat quiet month leading up to ApacheCon. Promoted the merchandising policy approved - there is clearly interest in a variety of places for using Apache brands on non-computer swag: https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/merchandise Thanks to Mark Thomas for the new private BRAND JIRA instance, which we have not quite started using. Media queries (i.e. to use our brands in television, movies, and the like) were received for Tomcat and OpenOffice and approved. Several new members have joined trademarks@ recently, which is great; however sadly there is still very little feedback to policy change proposals, like one Rich brought forth for events. * REGISTRATIONS & CONTRACTS A large number of international registrations are coming up for renewal with some project(s), in many cases with additional and more complex costs. We will work with the relevant PMC(s) to discuss which registrations are cost effective to renew. Held a telecon with a commercial company where a potential conflict existed, and came to a satisfactory verbal agreement that allows a peaceful coexistence.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD Thanks to the board for last month's resolution and a focus on the future. * OPERATIONS A mixed month, in that while a couple of projects had good discussions about handling reported issues themselves, it's also clear that some projects are not aware of some obvious and well-linked-to documentation. Ensuring enough of our PMCs are aware of ASF-wide policies continues to be an issue. I'll ask one last time for any feedback on proposed policy updates - Services naming policy: https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/services - Merchandise use policy: https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/merchandise (public) https://svn.apache.org/repos/private/committers/brand/merchandise.txt (committer-only additional permissions) While no changes have been made in event policies, the changing landscape of major events run around some of our popular project communities means that we will need to consider how better to serve both per-project events as well as our own ApacheCon. In particular, while more new events ask to use our project's branding, two major events are transitioning away from using our brands. * REGISTRATIONS & CONTRACTS Counsel continues to work slowly through existing requests or responses. Our CASSANDRA registration was issued in the US, a great success after a long process to secure a simple consent agreement. IMPALA marks a new record for incoming podling with the most pre-existing registrations transferred to the ASF, covering applications or registrations in 7 countries.
WHEREAS recent discussions show a need to clarify how our Brand Management policy is set. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the following five rules apply to our Brand Management policy from now on and until changed by a new Board Resolution: 1. Setting of brand policy is delegated to V.P. Brand. 2. All PMCs are required to follow brand policy. 3. Exceptions to brand policy are permitted and should be agreed between the PMC and V.P. Brand. 4. All exceptions, including those already agreed, must be documented in a single central location. 5. The escalation path for any issues (changes to policy, agreement of exceptions etc.) is first the President, then the board. Special Order 7B, Clarify Brand Management policy, was tabled. @Brett: resolve this on the board mail list prior to the Members' meeting
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD Please see last month's Brand report and this month's President report. * OPERATIONS Short and fairly quiet month. Lacking any significant actionable feedback, I plan to clarify and ratify the following two policies: - Services naming policy: https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/services - Merchandise use policy: https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/merchandise (public) https://svn.apache.org/repos/private/committers/brand/merchandise.txt (committer-only additional permissions) A proposal to encourage (rather than prohibit) "Apache" in third party event branding has been brought up. As with the draft proposals above, disappointingly little (none, so far on events) feedback has appeared. Similarly, a call to members@ soliciting questions about Apache brands met with resounding silence. Will try one more time - hoping the activity around the member's meeting helps. * REGISTRATIONS & CONTRACTS Still working through some complex feedback from counsel on potential issues with registration applications. Balancing the needs and requests of various PMCs with limited in-house expertise and budget for counsel continues to take effort. A proposal for a new method of tax-deductible fundraising by licensing brands was forwarded to fundraising@; the process is likely to take a while to come to fruition (or to be decided against, perhaps).
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD As noted in last month's report, we await ratification by the board as to the status of brand policy and unresolved questions thereon (issue continued from last month). As directed by the President, I am prioritizing available efforts on projects and podlings that are clearly and actively accepting of the relationship with brand policy. * OPERATIONS Slightly slower month than usual on crises and questions, which let us spend some time focusing on adding to the documentation. Two draft proposals are awaiting more feedback: - Services naming policy: https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/services - Merchandise use policy: https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/merchandise (public) https://svn.apache.org/repos/private/committers/brand/merchandise.txt (committer-only additional permissions) A proposal to encourage (rather than prohibit) "Apache" in third party event branding has been brought up. As with the draft proposals above, disappointingly little (none, so far on events) feedback has appeared. Similarly, a call to members@ soliciting questions about Apache brands met with resounding silence. Met with trademark counsel to improve operations around registration processing and timelines and to bring new counsel on our account up to speed on our objectives. * REGISTRATIONS & CONTRACTS Several project registration requests have gotten change suggestions from counsel to better provide the best chance at registration without conflicts or office actions. I don't know yet if this is a trend at the USPTO or just a factor of some specific project names that are more common words being popular. New applications for COUCHDB, MESOS, and BIGTOP have been submitted. We responded to an overly-broad potential conflict on our TEZ application made by an overzealous examiner.
WHEREAS, the Board of Directors has created the office of "Vice President, Brand Management", serving at the direction of the President, and, WHEREAS, the President has requested that the Board of Directors ratify the actions of Vice President, Brand Management as reported within the Foundation records, NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the actions of the VP, Brand Management have to this date been in the best interests of the Foundation, and are hereby ratified, confirmed and approved as the acts and deeds of this Foundation. Special Order 7A, Confirm the actions of the VP, Brand Management, was approved by Unanimous Vote, with Chris, Jim, and Bertrand abstaining.
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD As noted in last month's report, we await ratification by the board as to the status of brand policy and unresolved questions thereon (as is amply reflected in mailing list archives). Separately, it is clear we lack the volunteer time to respond to questions from outside parties and PMCs with either the timeliness, or the consistent and knowledgeable answers and assistance that our projects and contributors deserve. I do not have a solution to this long-term issue other than the documentation already provided, so I look to President and the board as a whole to help brainstorm. In particular, while we have detailed documentation and education on a wide variety of trademark related questions, it is clear from recent experience that what's provided is not sufficient to better educate our project communities and our Membership. * OPERATIONS Issues and questions are far behind normal answers given the long, contentious, and confusing threads about all of brand policy (or lack thereof). Attempting to answer Member questions, deal with the harsh rhetoric, and providing additional explanations for brand activities sucked up virtually all available volunteer time over the past month. Additional documentation was created in response to questions, including listings of both selected known trademark issues requiring evaluation, as well as a listing of known cases where non detailed overview of all existing brand documentation: https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/policies I co-presented "Trademarks In Open Source" at the Practising Law Institute legal education conference, which was very well received. * REGISTRATIONS & CONTRACTS Signed updated event contract for a major Hadoop-related conference. Our CASSANDRA application in the US has published for opposition. Several requests are still in process at various stages. -- - Shane https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/resources
* ISSUES FOR THE BOARD Please see the president's report. In particular, a clear ratification by the board if the existing policy documents posted on the website are correct or not. While PMCs report to the board, my expectation is that the brand policies are required policies by PMCs, and that the board will take action to work with PMCs repeatedly refusing to follow them. If there are specific policies that the board wishes to change to guidelines, that would be fine. If the board votes to change all brand policies to be non-required, well... I'm not sure what other work there would be for Brand Management to do. https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/ Also, please see the brand request in the President's submitted budget. * OPERATIONS trademarks@ requests and questions both internally and externally; and discussions from PMCs and Members, continues to grow beyond the capacity of the few regularly participating Brand Management Committee members to respond to. Our current volunteer pool and resources are insufficient to continue to be able to provide sufficient services for projects requesting help or registrations. I do not have a current solution for this, so over the next quarter will work with the President to look for improvements or additional proposals to the board. To address some of the questions from the many discussion threads about brand processes and details of specific issues, I have published some additional information for review by the board and any interested Members or committers. * REGISTRATIONS The IMPALA registrations have been donated to the ASF. Our HADOOP application in India has been published for opposition; this is the last step before the registration will actually issue. Our APACHE registration has finally issued in Brazil. Several requests are still in process at various stages.
* ISSUE FOR THE BOARD: Budget overrun. * OTHER OPERATIONS: Very busy; more issues arise than we have volunteers able to provide useful answers. * BUDGET Brand is currently overspending compared to the last board-approved annual budget, both in the short term, and for the foreseeable future given known and likely requests from projects and podlings. There are two factors that have almost completely hidden the true cost of brand from us before quite recently, meaning that most expectations in the past of what we get vs. what we pay were unrealistic: 1- Originally, counsel provided essentially all services pro bono, only passing on actual registration application fees. In mid-2015, counsel move us to a new retainer which charges for services at a discount rate, and generally ensures a flat cap of $5K per month for legal services to limit our budget exposure. Note that this also seems to limit the rate at which some work is accomplished as well. 2- Due to a billing error, 5 months of past bills were never sent until just this month. Thus we have an additional $18k due this month for services rendered in the past; however once this is covered future bills should be much more even. To provide services that projects and podlings are asking for, an estimated monthly run rate is $6K/month. This accounts for $5K of services from primary counsel monthly, plus the occasional registration application fees; plus the rare fees from outside counsel where primary counsel aren't able to directly represent us. * OPERATIONS Along with the extra discussions spilling over about two major projects the board has shown concern over in the recent past, a wide variety of questions continues to come into trademarks@ from both our projects and outside parties. Providing timely, polite, and correct answers or guidance to all requests is no longer something sustainable with volunteers. While some of these questions are mostly answered by existing documentation, it's clear that the documentation isn't widely known. Separately, many of these questions are not covered by documentation, and we don't always have volunteers who can provide consistent, clear, and appropriate answers. Unlike with code checkins, providing an incorrect answer sometimes results in bad results that *cannot* easily be corrected. To ensure at least our "how to deal with an infringement" documentation is usable, we are working on an experiment with the Hadoop PMC to have them use the docs (and ask questions/suggest improvements) to start contacting some of the existing misuses of their brand. * CONFERENCES I will be presenting at ApacheCon Seville on three topics: - Improving your Apache Project's Image and Brand - Practical Trademark Law For FOSS Projects - Successfully Profiting From Apache Projects And Brands All slides will be posted on our resources page after the conference: https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/resources * LICENSES / REGISTRATIONS Still finalizing conference branding contract, will be signed as soon as it reflects our current v1.3 Event branding policy. Registration applications are in process per request from Hadoop, Hive, Bigtop, and Tez PMCs in the US and Tomcat PMC for international jurisdictions. - Shane
Travel, the school year, and preparing for upcoming talks have led to less progress on brand answers and policy improvements than I hoped, although Mark Thomas has done an excellent job in several areas both answering questions and helping to analyze issues, including some ideas for improving operations in the longer term. I hope to have some plans documented by ApacheCon, although finding the a workable and sustainable solution to protecting Apache brands will be a long-term effort that will require more help. I will be presenting "Practical Trademark Law for FOSS Projects" at All Things Open, based largely on experiences with Apache projects dealing with third party uses. I will also be presenting several trademark-related talks at ApacheCon in Seville, Spain. Separately, I have been invited to speak at a law conference on open source trademark matters. One question about registered trademarks did come up that needs clarification: PMCs are responsible for policing notable use of their project trademarks in the same manner whether their trademarks are registered or not. The ASF treats all Apache project names and logos as trademarks of the Foundation. Two PMCs with strong brands have been actively working on addressing some trademark issues, which is great to see the attention and care. Unfortunately the number of times that PMC members either disagree on actions to take or have misconceptions about how trademark policies work means that there is still a lot of back and forth with trademarks on many of the issues. The Domain Name Policy is being updated to prohibit the use of Apache project names as second level or similar style domain names when used for content related to potentially similar software products or services to that Apache project. It's clear from review that we will need to publicize this more widely to ensure PMCs are aware of it. A major non-English website and long-running conference using one of our registered trademarks was brought to trademarks@ and will need to be addressed. Given the popularity of the project, it's disappointing that this website was never reported before now. There is also little apparent interest from the PMC to work on addressing it. I am negotiating an contract update to continue licensing a project's registered mark for a recurring conference.
Interesting and complex questions continue on trademarks@ apace. The growth of both projects/podlings, the major vendors that use them (and sometimes abuse them) continues to outstrip our small amount of volunteer energy available to properly address them. The trend is clear that we are not able to provide the level of brand management expertise to all Apache projects that is asked for. Separately, it's clear from spot checks that some projects are not doing as thorough a job of branding or trademark enforcement as we would expect to maintain the expected Apache-style long-term independent community governance with new and diverse contributors. A number of attempts over the past two years to draw in new skilled volunteers has resulted in but one volunteer with the consistency, experience, and levelheaded-ness to be a regular advisor or driver of branding issues. Similarly, it appears that we are over capacity of our legal counsel given our limited budget and our monthly discount fee agreement, even only accounting for the most basic of PMC-requested services. Mark Thomas has started work on improving our event branding policy, especially with respect to ensuring that Apache branded events don't unduly conflict with our own ApacheCon conferences. Interesting trademarks@ discussions this month: - Are favicons part of a project brand? In general, yes they are. - Several merchandising requests, both permissions and to buy. - Numerous discussions about Apache Spark, OpenOffice, and OFBiz marks. - Offer to sell us a projectname.nyc domain name, refused. - Shane
Complex questions and heated discussion threads continue to pour through trademarks@ from a variety of PMCs and outside parties alike. Even accounting for the slowdown of responses during many recent summer vacations, the trend of notable issues requiring thoughtful and knowledgeable responses continues to grow faster than the number of volunteers providing regular and productive assistance. A PMC with a popular project is requesting international registrations in European Union, Japan, and India for their project name, and have supplied a detailed and well-thought-out rationale for the expense and effort for the additional registrations (a US application is in process already). Notably, a company working in this space has volunteered to help cover the legal costs of the registration in a way that properly respects our fundraising policies. While there are outstanding issues relating to the PMC's work on policing third party uses of their brand, I support the additional registrations and hope to work with operations@ on an appropriate way to secure greater rights for the ASF while minimizing our actual expenses. Unfortunately the discussion on the PMC's progress became more heated and widespread than I thought would be productive. Several trademark policy improvements are being proposed to better clarify allowable third party uses, in response to both existing projects as well as an incubating project's questions about ability to allow the project donor to continue using the brand. The policy for incoming names will be clarified to ensure it's clear that when donating a software product brand or trademark, it must be fully donated to the ASF, and the original donor does not retain any special rights. For cases where the original donor still has questions, the best advice will be for the podling to choose a new, unique name that the ASF can fully own.
# Strategic Planning As more projects express interest in trademarks and more uses thereof (in certifications, services, transfers to or from third parties, etc.) the variety of kinds of questions coming to trademarks@ continues to grow. While we have basic documentation, it's clear that a solid understanding of how open source trademarks work in the software vendor world is still lacking among most PMCs and Members. Long term, finding much better ways to provide better branding and trademark support to our projects will be critical, both for our many big data projects (due to the extremely competitive market and pressures from for-profit vendors) and for the Foundation's reputation as a vendor-neutral and independently led home for project communities. In my mind, this is our second most important issue to solve, after the question of hiring sufficient operational and infrastructure staff to ensure that our core services are managed appropriately. # Operations Summer vacation and home contractors have slowed response times. A number of other project and Branding Committee members are providing some feedback and thoughtful commentary on some issues, but it's still very spotty. In particular, one project with past issues has been providing some very thoughtful and helpful comments and questions, which is great progress. # Registrations Cloudera has assigned the IMPALA mark with a number of international registrations and applications to the ASF for the podling's use. Another open source foundation has denied our request to use the trademark for one of their projects recently forked to an Apache project. While this is one of the rare cases where it could be appropriate to transfer the trademark - they have stopped development of the project and it's an amicable fork - we will abide by their request (and I'll ensure the PMC does so). Our ACCUMULO and TAJO registrations in the US have completed, and our TAJO application was published in the USPTO Gazette, the final step to being completed. Our assumed applications for a recently graduated podling are being opposed, and we're working with counsel on the most effective way to secure sufficient registration(s) for our purposes. - Shane
# Operations A number of project-related discussions spilled across trademarks@ this past month, with complaints about either vendor use of project brands or PMC handling of the situations; Spark and Cassandra both were major sources of discussion and action by members, the PMCs, and the board. The good news is that this shows a wider variety of individuals are looking at and raising issues that affect how our project brands and the Apache brand are used (or mis-used). We've long needed to have more Members and project contributors looking for and bringing up these issues. The not as good news is the way that these issues have been raised, as well as in some cases how the PMC has responded. The trouble with branding mis-uses is that many project participants don't pay attention until they happen to see something that REALLY UPSETS THEM! Thus we historically have plenty of times with no reports, and then suddenly a project contributor or ASF Member RAISES THIS HUGE ISSUE THAT MUST BE DEALT WITH. Since branding issues are not as clear cut as compiler errors, this often results in an imprecise call to action that is sometimes taken in the wrong spirit by the receiving PMC, resulting in a lot of unfortunate noise and anger. Separately, one PMC did not appear to take recent complaints seriously enough, to the point where the board required a new project report and discussed some very serious potential future consequences. This not as good news calls for better behavior in three kinds of situations: 1- If you see an Apache project branding mis-use, say something - in a polite, specific, and actionable way. We have guides for this. Branding issues need to be as specific as possible, to ensure we can request concrete steps by the mis-user to correct them. In particular, assuming ignorance rather than malice, and raising issues in a positive way really help to reduce miscommunications and arguments about details. http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/reporting 2- It's clear that not all PMCs fully understand and/or regularly pay attention to their project's branding issues. Detailed procedures exist, but ensuring that PMCs are truly taking things like Project Independence to heart in their day to day actions - as well as in the public uses of their brand by vendors in the ecosystem - is something we still need to work on. Branding issues are far easier to solve the earlier they are reported, and PMCs need to fully ensure the appearance of independent governance for their projects: http://community.apache.org/projectIndependence 3- While we are a volunteer-led organization that allows individual project participants broad responsibility and ability to direct their own project's affairs, we are still a single Foundation with documented governance and required policies. It should not take a director bringing up serious consequences to a PMC to have the PMC take credible reports of brand mis-uses seriously, and to take positive action on specific issues immediately. # Registrations After some great progress on a few legal related issues, several new issues have come up and some past ones seem stalled. It's clear I'll need to work on more time as VP to keep the legal & application process side of the house on track. This needs more investigation to see if it's related to our current counsel billing process and budget. OFBIZ is now our registered trademark in the US. We have applied for US registrations for TEZ and FLINK. Several other projects have expressed interest in US registrations, including one or two logo registrations. # Organizational Note For the record, I have been laid off from my employer, and am now formally unaffiliated. This does not change my view on the VP, Brand Management position, which has always been that the good of the Foundation as a whole comes first.
## Board Issues (overview, more below): - DLAPiper submitted bill for $16K+, which will be re-billed at $5K/month instead; however project-requested expenses are significant. - Couple of significant cases where PMCs are clearly not effectively policing or noticing mis-uses of their brand. ## Operations: Wide variety of questions as well as some good discussions on trademarks@ about a few of the issues. Still hoping for some substantive comments on the self-help/reporting guidelines as well as the brand usage guidelines. http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/templates/ http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/guide Added Mark Thomas to the Brand Management President's committee. Spoke and/or led sessions on branding issues and Apache project branding policies & tips at ApacheCon, Community Leadership Summit, and at OSCON. Feedback was positive; it's clear the larger ecosystem of FOSS developers still needs a lot of education on trademark issues. Have been requested to give similar talks at two future conferences. ## Registrations: After a quiet period, counsel took action on a number of registration applications, as well as responded on our behalf to several office actions and other registration issues with our applications as well as two competing registration applications from a third party. This was great to move through some of our backlog of requests; however it also resulted in many hours of work (which are billed at a discount). Have a couple more projects requesting registration in US and elsewhere that are still to be processed. ## Issue - Budgeting: With the number of projects requesting registrations - both in the US and in selected international cases - and the number of office actions or other legal conflicts, counsel presented a $16K bill for the past month. Our agreement specifies a monthly limit, however the full (discounted!) amount will still be carried forward. Given the interest from projects requesting registration once they understand the value, I expect proportionally more projects over the next year will be requesting registrations. This is hard to predict how quickly it will build, but will clearly be significantly more expense this coming FY than was actually spent last FY. The main drivers are 1) more projects being making request, and 2) the new fee discount (instead of pro bono) that we have with counsel. ## Issue - PMC Policing / Independence: While the self-help guides and process for policing project marks are much improved, recent events show that the ability or even apparent interest by PMCs to actually police their marks varies widely. The fact that we have a number of very "hot" projects these days while still seeing a relatively low number of potential infringement issues coming to trademarks@ tends to point to the fact that most PMCs aren't as active at reviewing third party use of their brand(s) as expected. We have what is becoming a very clear and detailed guide - but not nearly enough PMCs or committers are actually following it. Unless we can get communities engaged in this work, we should expect to see more issues like the two notable project questions that came up recently.
Several significant brand issues reported this month which unfortunately show that PMC awareness and capability to deal with trademark problems varies widely. In particular, the lack of timely response and thoughtful analysis in two situations is disappointing, where issues that should have either been dealt with, or at least attracted attention from the PMC still aren't resolved. One of these involved a third party showing clear confusion as to the source of our software product; instead of contacting the Apache project directly, they had been contacting another software vendor with questions about our software. This specific case is not the real issue; the real issue is ensuring that PMCs as a whole can consistently and fairly act to police their brands, especially when PMC members work for the vendors potentially causing issues. To help ensure guidelines are sufficiently clear, I'm working on much more detailed explanations as well as asking for reviews and feedback on documentation on trademarks@. In the spirit of self-service, proposed template(s) for contacting third parties and guidelines for how to properly refer to Apache project names are now published: http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/templates/ http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/guide (draft) I would love to see more Member feedback on these over on trademarks@, as well as thoughtful and specific suggestions for clarifying the Domain Name and Event Name branding policies to ensure that PMCs can apply them more easily and consistently. To help test these guidelines, I will be using them to contact a number of companies misusing our Hadoop brand in their software products shortly. Met with DLAPiper counsel to ensure they are addressing a number of outstanding applications and legal questions, including a review of the OpenOffice PMC's proposed repackaging license Submitted formal trademark complaints to the Microsoft store in relation to third party software using our OpenOffice registered trademarks. At the request of PMCs: Renewed OPENOFFICE.ORG US registration; TOMCAT US application was finalized; provided responses to USPTO office actions for FLINK and PDFBOX applications. Several US and international registrations are preparing for applications.
A host of personal emergencies and a variety of new, complex issues in the past month mean that there's a backlog on making improvements to brand how-to policies and procedures, but looking forward to newfound free time to make progress shortly. Created a BRAND private JIRA to track internal tasks and make it easier for other trademarks committee members to productively review and work on improvements. Unfortunately, a PMC sent a strongly worded infringement letter to a third party who actually holds a registered trademark to their name locally. We were lucky in that this only resulted in the third party having their legal counsel email us back with a polite "We're not infringing, here's why, please go away" letter. I'll need assistance reviewing the existing procedure and improving it so it's easy to understand when PMCs may directly send infringement letters, versus when they must work with the Trademarks Committee. A lot of attention was brought to poor third party usage of our HADOOP® name in places where nary an Apache® can be found. Dealing with this effectively - as long experience with some issues with the Hadoop PMC show - requires a much more detailed naming guideline so that PMCs and third parties alike can have a specific and dispassionate answer as to how often the Apache must be used before the project name. We could use more thoughtful feedback on trademarks@ here. Several PMC trademark registrations in the US and elsewhere, and a renewal are outstanding, and will be processed (and billed by our counsel) in the next few weeks.
Busier than usual month on trademarks@, but now have the time and organization - and documentation improvements - to really improve our ability to respond to basic questions, and to provide guidance and precedents for more complex questions. Approved several continuing events; the number of Apache projects with notable annual conferences using our brands continues to grow strongly. Hadoop PMC handled a number of details around proper references to their brand by different vendors nicely. Working with the AOO PMC to make formal trademark infringement complaints to the Microsoft Store due to a vendor there misusing our OpenOffice marks. Counsel is working on our backlog of registration requests; began applications for TOMCAT internationally, TEZ, CASSANDRA, and MESOS. KYLIN and SPARK projects are preparing justifications for their international registrations. KYLIN PMC also wishes to register their logo. Awaiting assistance from operations@/treasurer@ to report past brand payments, we have an additional invoice awaiting approval based on the report. Shane has started a regular review of selected project homepages and brand presentation, both as a way to help PMCs understand policies as well as to suggest improvements for ways to help draw in new contributors. Will be posting regular updates on http://communityovercode.com/ throughout the year.
Overall trademarks questions were down over the end of year holidays. A couple of PMC requests for registration are awaiting my time to complete review and move forward, which I will catch up on this month. A number of different individuals and organizations have asked to produce t-shirts and similar goods featuring Apache project logos, so I plan to publish a formal policy outlining requirements, and broadly allowing such use for non-profit purposes by outside parties. The USPTO has published our HBASE, CTAKES, PDFBOX, MANIFOLDCF, and TOMCAT registrations in the gazette, which is the final step before the official registrations are granted. A registration by Oracle of OPENOFFICE.ORG has finally completed in India.
A very wide variety of questions on trademarks, including many thoughtful requests from proposed/new podlings for assistance on helping them vet their incoming project names; great to see IPMC folks really connecting the dots on this issue early on. Also, kudos to Hadoop PMC for working on addressing some third party issues recently. Litographs, a t-shirt vendor we have a licensing agreement with is working on getting more big data related Apache project logos and codes on their products. I'm working on processing several trademark registration requests for projects. Will work with President to submit one PMC's justification for spending on their international registrations.
I was invited to be a panel speaker on "Community Trademark Policies" at the annual SFLC Law Conference [1] at Columbia Law School. The feedback there and from other sessions at ApacheCon make it clear that the gap between how our policies are supposed to work, and the actual knowledge of our policies - both among lawyers and committers alike - is still wide. This gap is not unique to the ASF, but it does affect us differently from other software non-profits in that we have hundreds of separate project communities and thousands of active committers - all as volunteers. The trademarks@ list was quieter than usual, although the complexity of issues being brought up continues to grow. A competing USPTO registration application for XSTREAM HADOOP [2] was discovered, and the Hadoop PMC has requested that we have counsel work to object to the application. APACHE is now officially a registered trademark in Norway, reg # 284311. [1] https://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2015/sflc-fall-conference/ [2] https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86786875&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=stat usSearch
Presented two updated brand education sessions at Apache:Big Data and ApacheCon Core in Budapest. Questions both at the sessions and in the halls at the conference show that we still need to improve education for PMCs and committers in Apache projects. Published updated and annotated site map and resources for branding policy and practices, as well as a trademark registration cost guideline. Site map includes links to brand-related education and presentations: http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/resources Signed non-exclusive, annual renewable licensing agreement with Litographs, a garment, poster, and printed goods vendor for use of Apache project marks in exchange for a percentage of royalties. The detailed agreement uses similar terms that we've provided to independent Member shops in the past, but can serve as a solid model to better memorialize other requests from third parties who wish to produce non-computer related goods promoting Apache communities using Apache marks. Working with the President, please see the Tomcat PMC's additional report requesting authorization to use existing Brand budgeted funds to pay for several international trademark registrations of their TOMCAT mark (which we've already applied to register in the US). I fully support the Tomcat PMC's request. Looking forward, we are still evaluating the Brand budget situation given the unexpected loss of our pro bono counsel support. It will take some time to see what the expected monthly expenses for DLAPiper support will be given our level of work and our discount structure.
Operations proceeding normally. The Mesos, Tomcat, and Spark projects have requested registrations both in the US as well as internationally, including Europe and other jurisdictions. Working with the PMCs to provide a justification to the board for the registration fees, which are not able to be covered under the existing brand budget. Various PMC members requested clarifications as to how Apache marks should be handled in various common software distribution or install channels, like linux package managers and the like. The Mesos project noted concern over several US registrations that will cause problems for their requested application. Registration application of HADOOP in India was provisionally denied; however counsel believes we can overcome the issues at very minor cost and have the registration granted.
A quieter month than usual for requests, but running a little behind due to summer vacation time. Thanks as always to members helping to constructively answer questions. Secured agreements allowing registration applications of APACHE in Norway and Australia to proceed. Signed updated engagement letter with DLAPiper outlining their new cost structure. Operationally they will continue providing services we need, however registration related items are no longer pro bono, but will be charged at a discounted rate with a monthly cap to limit our expenses.
Fielded a broader array of questions on trademarks@ this month, especially some interesting questions from PMCs about registrations, appropriate logos and conflicts, and a number of good discussions from PMCs about proper usage of Apache marks by third parties. Thanks to Mark Thomas among others for helping to answer questions. DLAPiper, for reasons unrelated to our work, can no longer provide pro bono handling of our docket and new registrations (although they can continue to serve as pro bono counsel for trademark questions). They can offer us a flat and discounted monthly rate to continue at the same level of docketing and registration services, which I plan to continue with. Other counsel were approached to see if they could perform these services for our projects pro bono or cheaper, but they report they are not able to.
Fielded a very wide range of questions from projects and third parties alike about branding policy and permissions. Thanks to those members helping out on trademarks@, especially folks surfacing questions from various private@project lists for advice. Several previously requested project registrations are currently on hold due to administrative issues. Approved the new names Apache: Big Data and ApacheCon: Core for the updated ApacheCon branding used by LF. Investigating a report that a notable contributor to Apache projects is being threatened with legal action related to their use of our APACHE brand on their products.
## Operations: Higher than usual number of questions on trademarks@, including a number of new kinds of questions; overall I view this as good because many new third parties are asking questions based on our updated Contact Us page. Resolved 3 PODLINGNAMESEARCHes, 4 new ones submitted. As discussed at last month's meeting, the Apache Orc pTLP creation did have a PODLINGNAMESEARCH, which is something we need to more clearly document for future pTLPs to ensure their PMCs understand any issues with their chosen names. ## Registrations: At the request of the relevant PMCs, we submitted US registration applications this month for: OFBiz. Several other PMC registration requests are still coordinating getting all the information needed reviewed by the PMC and to counsel. Our HADOOP trademark registration application in Japan was finally granted. The OPENOFFICE trademark registration application in Canada that was originally begun by the prior owner has finally issued the formal registration.
## Budget: *Board action needed* * BUDGET REQUEST INCREASE: += $2,425.00 on behalf of the well organized Tomcat project who wishes to register their name as both a service mark in the US, as well as a software product mark in the EU/CTM, India, and China. Given the President's adjusted budget request for brand, the core budget is only meant to (primarily) cover a US software product registration for any TLP that requests one. Thus I would like to increase the brand budget request by +$2425 to meet the Tomcat PMC's request (which I support). Separately, please FYI that due to a billing error, over $12K of legal fees and outside counsel expenses incurred during 2014 was not actually billed to the ASF until last month; apologies if this caused some confusion as to the monthly brand expenses in the past. ## Operations: Gave two well-received talks at ApacheCon Austin related to brands, one focused on education for PMCs and the other focused on helping vendors working in our project technology spaces how to respectfully use Apache brands. The level of questions I got both after the talks and during the conference was much better than in past years in terms of PMC members asking more detailed and thoughtful questions. Work on the requested detailed risk analysis for the board of not registering our project trademarks is progressing slowly due to ApacheCon, budgets, and the like. Propose to present something next month. Interesting questions on trademarks@ this month about the recent Groovy project submission to the Incubator (no TM issues expected), the use of trademarks in relation to email addresses (to reduce spam), as well as questions about detailed uses of marks including the Apache Attic as well as a higher volume then usual from both PMCs and outside parties. (Outstanding) Waiting on infra to confirm if supporting a regularly maintained list of all Apache product trademarks is feasible; if it is not feasible, then I would expect to ask for an additional budget item to complete this task in the future. ## Registrations: At the request of the relevant PMCs, we submitted US registration applications this month for: Accumulo, ManifoldCF, Tomcat. The Tajo, ManifoldCF, DeltaSpike, Accumulo, Bigtop, OFBiz have requested to register their project names; we're still coordinating getting all the information needed for those and previous requests to counsel. The PMC requested Cassandra and CouchDB applications are on hold pending various legal consent issues. The Tomcat PMC has requested additional registrations, both as software products in the EU/CTM, India, China and as a service (i.e. the service of providing developer support to contributors) in the US. This is on hold pending a decision on budget. The Corinthia podling has requested to register their product name, and may have volunteers to donate the costs associated with the registration if the official Brand budget cannot be used to pay for podling registrations. Awaiting feedback from the Corinthia PPMC currently.
## Budget: I hope the board will approve the President's submitted Brand budget, based on actual past year spend. The board should be aware that if many projects request registrations - especially any projects that may require additional legal support - I expect we may make an additional budget request in the future at that time. The actual spend for the past year is lower than expected due to several factors, both in speed of execution for existing registration questions, as well as some billing delays from counsel (i.e. where we were billed much later than I had expected for previous services). ## Operations: Unblocked the ™-registrations@ process for handling PMC questions about registrations, which resulted in several earlier requests now being processed. Posted Apache Branded Social Media Guidelines/Best practices, based on the excellent guidelines the Apache CloudStack project; we hope all Apache projects will find them useful. Review welcomed before pushing them out. http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/socialmedia Posted Apache Project Branding Best Practices and emailed to PMCs. http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/register Working on trademarks@ as well as with DLAPiper counsel to prepare information on risk analysis for our current trademark policy and our current low rate of registrations for projects overall per the board and President's request. Note: I do not expect full details available for this month's meeting. Requested operations@ generate a full listing page of trademarks for all Apache projects. If this is not practical for our own infra to perform, I would recommend that we add budget to create this in the future. Requested a detailed cost accounting from DLAPiper per request of Treasurer/Virtual for use in future audit. ## Registrations: Our registration application for HADOOP in Korea has been formally refused due to a pre-existing registration for similar claimed software products. Korea is a first-to-file country. At the request of the relevant PMCs, we submitted US registration applications for: PDFBOX, CTAKES, HBASE. The OpenMeetings, Traffic Server, Tomcat, CouchDB, DeltaSpike, and Spark have requested to register their project names; we're still coordinating getting all the information needed to counsel. The Cassandra PMC has requested to register their mark, however we are waiting for a third party consent to be signed before proceeding to prevent any problems.
Worked on clearing podling name search entries; however not all PPMCs are performing the needed steps before submitting. Submitted two educational talks on branding plus a potential barcamp/PMC tutorial at ApacheCon Austin. Denied a services branding request using a derivative of a registered Apache mark that would highly likely be infringing if used. While it is positive this third party requested permission first, it is puzzling why they would request permissions for something so clearly inappropriate. Requested branding updates related to improper use of our HADOOP mark on the new opendataplatform.org website. As many popular Apache projects grow in widespread use and broad commercial interest, it will become more important than ever to ensure that our PMCs understand the importance of their trademarks in managing an independent project, and ensuring that they have the tools - education, access to counsel when needed, and the ability to register their marks - to do so. As a new website, the specific legal trademark issues on opendataplatform.org are limited (so far) and it's not clear how the relevant companies will present branding going forward. However third party projects like this that blur the lines between their software product offerings and the underlying Apache software products are likely to cause other issues about end user confusion as to the true source of software, as well as concern with many developers who may be interested in contributing to Apache projects.
The Apache CloudStack PMC is working with the Linux Foundation (LF) directly with the aim of setting up a CloudStack Marketing Alliance, outside of the ASF, to help promote the use and development of CloudStack. The PMC and LF representatives are working within our published brand policy, and are working with relevant ASF officers when needed. This looks to be a very productive start to this PMC's long-running broader work around showcasing CloudStack to the public, and should provide good experiences and models for other PMCs wishing to broaden their outreach. Several other PMCs have begun directly issuing permissions for small/mid scale events using their marks, so the process of PMC permissions is starting to be used, although more education and clearer documentation is still very much needed. Submitted a USPTO registration for FLINK at the request of the newly graduated PMC. The ASF received the formal trademark registration paperwork for our HADOOP registration in Japan. With assistance of counsel and many other ASF'ers, updated and signed an event MOU with Cloudera for their ongoing Hadoop World conference. trademarks@ lost Jukka as a moderator. While Henri volunteered to fill in, the lack of any other volunteers is concerning for the long term with the relatively small number of Members who regularly step up to help productively work on trademarks@ matters.
Updated large scale event MOU with feedback from counsel and many trademark perspectives. Renewed existing Hadoop-related MOU with updated terms. Updated the event policy with clarifications for blackout dates and trademark attributions. A third party is requesting trademark permissions to use an Apache project logo for their training certification program. Starting the process of working with counsel to come up with a workable way to grant permissions. Feedback on our approach - charging fees, other requirements - appreciated on trademarks@. Several projects and members commented on the Corporate Recognition Best Practices, which is helpful both to better explain the practices as well as get feedback on more real-world applications of these type of guidelines for Apache projects.
A request for licensing a project brand for a larger, long lived event is generating some discussion as to what level of policy compliance is desired for major events. I expect we will resolve these next month, continuing similar to past agreements. Our registration application for the HADOOP mark in Korea has been preliminarily refused by the examiner due to a pre-existing HADOOP registration for a similar software product; we will work with counsel and the Hadoop PMC to see what impact this has. Note that Korea is a "first-to-file" country, meaning whoever successfully *files* a trademark first typically secures rights to it. Counsel confirms that we can legally delegate ability to provide project brand use permissions to PMCs and their VPs directly; however they also note that this may have risks - depending on how well PMCs manage this - with our long-term ability to defend our brands.
A quieter month than usual. We made good progress updating public policy documentation to allow per-project approvals for many permissions requests, including a centralized Contact Us page for third party questions. Sally and the press team rolled out the Powered By Apache set of per-project logos which look great. Some projects may wish to request changes to their logos (in some cases, to include just a graphic logo and not wording); they should contact press@ with specific requests and be sure to help update the underlying graphics. Two podlings are in the process of changing branding due to feedback or issues during the PODLINGNAMESEARCH process. While this in some cases may result in additional website and infra related work if a change is made, it is difficult to see how it can be avoided to ensure that the ASF both respects pre-existing third party trademarks, as well as ensuring our ability to defend our top-level project marks in the future.
trademarks@ volume was lighter than usual this month, allowing catchup on some outstanding third party questions. Sally did an amazing job of developing and rolling out the new Powered By Apache logo set and guidelines, including suggested logos for all Apache projects. These are a simple way that projects can choose to have users show their support of Apache and the projects in a wide variety of contexts. Along with DLAPiper's continuing assistance on tracking registrations and legal advice, in conjunction with Jim I've gotten some excellent trademark policy advice from Pamela Chestek, creator of ModelTrademarkGuidelines.org, in terms of the most effective ways to craft our public policies. Started work on updating brand policy contact us page, which starts the process of explicitly pointing third party questions to capable PMCs who have asked to handle more third party questions directly.
trademarks@ continues as busy as ever, even during the summer with OSCON and several long-overdue vacations for myself, so both daily operations and process improvements are running slower than planned. Similarly, discussion on the backlog PODLINGNAMESEARCH escalated quickly during a week I was mostly offline, which led to some unfortunate responses. Thanks to Henri in particular for pulling together constructive criticism and opinions on the remaining open issues. I attended OSCON to help man the ASF booth along with our EA Melissa and a host of volunteers, including David Nalley, Justin, Upayavira, Rich, and especially Dennis Hamilton. Virtually everyone who visited the ASF booth was immensely thankful for the work we and all Apache projects do. The variety of questions from attendees was incredibly varied, everything from "Oh, you have more than one project" to "How much do you get paid for working at Apache" to "How can I get this Apache Foo bug fixed?" We've begun using tm-registrations@ as a working list to manage the details of Apache product name registration applications with the EA and counsel, and DLAPiper has begun using this list. I'm also working with DLAPiper to continue to push more of their responses to tm-registrations@ or trademarks@ wherever possible instead of vp-brand. Counsel have reported back on several legal issues related to registration applications or questions, needing additional direction for applications being made or planned that have been requested by Apache projects. Used board concall to host meeting with Sally and a third party alleging abuse of Apache trademarks by a third party in their hiring process. Interesting queries this week include a blogger asking permission to use logos; a new Hadoop & Spark conference asking for a long-term partnership; notice that OpenMRS has adopted a modified version of our trademark policy; and a request to look into third party use of Apache marks in a negative sense in AdWords.
WHEREAS, the Board of Directors deems it to be in the best interests of the Foundation and consistent with the Foundation's purpose for the Brand Management Committee to be charged with establishing and managing brand policies based on the advice of legal counsel and the interests of the Foundation. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the office of "Vice President, Brand Management" shall serve in accordance with and subject to the direction of the Board of Directors and the Bylaws of the Foundation until death, resignation, retirement, removal or disqualification, or until a successor is appointed. Discussion: Shane: whether brand management is an executive office or not, PMCs need to pay more attention to branding issues. Brett: brand management has the authority to bring the board's attention to issues with PMCs. Jim: agree, regardless of the title of the position. The consensus is that brand management has the authority to set branding policy for the foundation and for PMCs. Jim will work with Shane to communicate to PMCs. Special Order 7D, Restore Brand Management as an Executive Officer, was tabled.
Several directors and members brainstormed on trademarks@ about ways to improve response times and our ability to help our many Apache projects manage their brands, including ways to better educate and empower PMCs to a much greater degree. In particular Chip and the CloudStack PMC have made proposals/patches to start implementing this for their project, which should be an excellent test case to ensure our documentation is sufficiently clear for PMCs. Our EA has jumped in on tm-registrations@ to help organize data collection for trademark registration details from a number of projects who have requested to register their product marks. As the breadth and complex types of questions both on trademarks@ and other email addresses (including non-list emails) grows, it has reached the point where it is becoming not practical to provide the level of support and expertise we would like to provide to all Apache projects with all volunteers. While our EA will be very helpful to pickup organizing registrations (in conjunction with counsel), many of these questions need some practical expertise to give the best answers. I will be manning the ASF booth at OSCON next week, and hope to be able to help out with sponsor and other contacts.
The number and complexity of issues coming into trademarks@ and vp-brand@ continues to increase. Several projects have requested registration of their project names; work will start as soon as the mailing list for organizing registration information is available. Beginning work with counsel to redirect the majority of work to the lists rather than private alias. Requesting counsel provide more regular billing as well as report of hours for audit purposes. Worked with counsel on several APACHE registration issues with good success.
The volume and variety of questions and issues on trademarks@ continues to be heavy, and in particular continues to show that more education and clearer policy documentation is needed, both for our project communities as well as a more clearly presented and easily approachable set of policy documentation for users and potential corporate sponsors or donors as well. Telecon with the Apache CouchDB project to discuss branding issues and enforcement ideas; the project has some great energy with new code merges and will be working on an improved and better articulated brand for CouchDB overall. Budget request submitted to president@. Note that while our actual spending is still well below budget for last year, this is partly due to delays in billing and processing time from counsel, so I expect to get a number of bills soon. Registrations Responded to a number of questions to APACHE registration issues in various jurisdictions. Preparing registrations for SERVICEMIX and ACTIVEMQ at project request. Working with counsel on securing a coexistence agreement and/or opposition to a third party registration of an Apache product name.
* Operations trademarks@ volume and variety of questions continues to be heavy. In particular we have a number of new requests to make Apache branded swag. A key need is a way to ensure that our own /marks/list listings of Apache marks is kept updated and includes sufficient information to provide to third parties reviewing our trademark policies. While Ross has suggested tasking EA to begin this as a manual process (by reading board graduation votes), an automated one that takes into account future product releases is needed. If we can't attract volunteers for this kind of task, will work with president@ to find appropriate infrastructure work to complete. * ApacheCon / CloudStackCollab I gave three presentations about Apache branding at both conferences last week, to moderate audiences but with very good feedback from attendees. Posted on the conference site and: http://www.slideshare.net/shanecurcuru It was clear both from hallway/after hours conversations and from specific feedback on my talks that more education is needed, both for PMCs (to best protect our brands) and for vendors who commonly engage with Apache projects (to ensure they understand that Apache product names are our trademarks, for example). Recorded a podcast about Apache branding activities at ApacheCon: http://community.redhat.com/blog/2014/04/upstream-podcast-4/ Similarly, I had a number of conversations with the CloudStack PMC about their desires for getting better support for branding and marketing (and infra) activities; the result of which can be seen in their monthly board report and emails to press@ / infra@ Met with Linux Foundation (LF) staff about ApacheCon and other conference branding. IMO branding at these conferences was great. LF is already producing the upcoming MesosCon, so we will need to work on ensuring an improved event approval process to work with LF events for our many Apache projects. * Registrations Registration of APACHE has succeeded in Switzerland! While we have made several registrations, this one has finished it's process, mostly merely because of the timing of the paperwork.
trademarks@ traffic continues to grow and bring up new issues. It's been very helpful to have a couple of members really step up to help and thoughtfully answer various questions; David Nalley has been especially helpful in this regard. Started a discussion on ways to improve services that trademarks@ and the ASF offers to our projects, although there's limited feedback so far there on some new ideas. I updated the Project Independence requirements in response to issues raised recently with the focus of the page: http://community.apache.org/projectIndependence.html Had a brief but productive call at DLAPiper request; they have a number of specific documents almost ready to offer to help improve and simplify our brand policing and education activities that I'm looking forward to. DLAPiper submitted a US registration for LUCENE. DLAPiper is submitting an international registration for HADOOP covering EU and several key first-to-file countries.
This was a very busy month on trademarks@, and there are a number of open questions still being worked on. There have also been a number of good discussions about clarifying our policies - both for PMCs as well as for third parties - and about improving the Project Independence guidelines. Incubator PMC and trademarks@ was contacted by a third party about our use of the Apache Sentry name for our security-related product. Discussions are continuing. My two talks on Brand Management were accepted for ApacheCon Denver, and also one brand talk at the following CloudStack Collab that week. Phew! The Apache Hadoop PMC created trademarks@hadoop.a.o privately archived mailing list; plans are to use it for better coordination of various Hadoop-related brand policing. Met with counsel for the CLOUDSTACK matter, and met with a representative from UKFast to work on a settlement to ensure our registration in the EU can continue and to ensure that UKFast recognizes our marks.
UPDATE: requested addenda with details of budget request at bottom. Board Issue: see President's report and Special Order A for a request for additional budgeted funding. See also the attached memorandum in board@ email from DLAPiper counsel Mark Radcliffe supporting this request. Along with the usual branding questions we've been having many more detailed questions about how Apache branding should (or should not) be applied in much more esoteric cases. A key question this month is what Maven artifact group IDs should be used when third party vendors provide patched versions of Apache software in various Maven repos. Reviewed and approved new ApacheCon contract and sponsor prospectus re: branding requirements. Held a videoconference hosted by counsel at DLAPiper with several vendors providing Hadoop-related products and services to get feedback on the best ways to roll out new Hadoop and related product branding requirements for third parties. Feedback from the meeting and from DLAPiper counsel show that this effort to ensure our ability to defend the Apache Hadoop trademarks will be a long-term effort. Met with DLAPiper counsel on ways to efficiently improve trademark enforcement in general, as well as brainstorm on ways to provide better training to our PMCS about brand management and awareness. Brainstormed specific ways that DLAPiper can better support our Hadoop and related products brands. UPDATE: Justification for updated budget request (Special Order A) == Brand Management == (Updated Request Jan 2014; net +$64,735.00) Recurring Expenses : $36,760.00 (+274%) 1.Register/Record most incoming podling names in US : $ 6,760.00 2.Register/Record selected key incoming podling names Intl : $ 4,000.00 3.Declarations/Renewals fees : $10,000.00 4.Separate Counsel legal fees : $16,000.00 Backlog registration exp : $41,375.00 (+XX%) 5.Register most TLP in US : $11,375.00 6.Register selected TLP Int'l : $15,000.00 7.Registrations of APACHE : $15,000.00 Category Total : $78,135.00 (+583%) Details: 1.Register/Record most incoming podling names in US $6,760 - Register the product name of most/all incoming podlings in the US. USPTO registration fee is $325 for each; est. up to 20 annually. Obviously we will want to coordinate with Incubator to ensure we're only registering podlings nearing graduation, typically. - Record change of ownership of any previously registered podling names. I.e. when an incoming podling has a registered trademark, we should to legally record this change of ownership with the applicable country registry of trademarks. Recording serves as notice to third parties of our ownership, and allows us to renew registrations. USPTO recording fee is $65; other jurisdictions are $100-$500 est. 2. Register/Record selected key incoming podling names Intl. $4,000 - Where a podling has existing international registrations, record the change of ownership internationally. Approximate cost $100-$500 each; est. 1-2 podlings annually. - If we have some podling with high popularity and vendors using it's branding, we may want to register up to one podling/year name internationally, probably in EU/CTM to preserve rights in those first-to-file jurisdictions. Approximate cost $1,500 ea. if done with a US registration. 3. Declarations/Renewals fees $10,000.00 - Registrations require maintenance and renewals: in the US, you must file 8&15 declarations at 5 years or risk losing the registration; at 10 years you must renew it. US 8&15 declarations are $300 each. US 10year renewals are $400. International renewals are more expensive. NOTE that we won't need much of this 3. budget for the next few years, since we only have ~20 current registrations that are on track for renewals soon- this will only really be needed when our backlog registrations age to 5 years. Obviously, we only renew registrations for active projects. This is an estimate for annual costs about 4 years in the future, assuming a roster of ~100 registrations. 4.Separate Counsel legal fees $16,000 While DLAPiper provides services pro bono, they sometimes have a conflict of interest with a particular registration, requiring us to seek another counsel's services. Similarly, for many international jurisdictions, DLAPiper arranges discounted (but not free) services from local counsel. This is an estimate of annual expenses based on: - Third party legal services dealing with non-US renewals or other registration questions: est. 4 cases x $2,000 est. = $4,000 - Third party legal advice dealing with office actions etc. in cases where DLAPiper has a conflict: est. 2 cases x $6,000 est. = $12,000 ---- Note these backlog requests are temporary for approx. 2 year period, until we catch up with existing project registrations we pursue. 5.Register most TLP in US : $11,375.00 This would register many of the simple to register names of software products that match our existing TLP project names. A proposed list of names to register as an example is: (USPTO fee $325ea) Accumulo, Airavata, Ambari, Archiva, Aries, Avro, Bigtop, Camel, Cassandra, Cayenne, Chukwa, Clerezza, Continuum, Crunch, Curator, CXF, Etch, Felix, Flume, Geronimo, Giraph, Gora, Hama, Hive, Isis, Jackrabbit, jUDDI, Kafka, Karaf, Lenya, Lucene, Mahout, ManifoldCF, Marmotta, Maven, Nutch, OFBiz, Pig, Pivot, POI, Sling, Solr, Sqoop, Stanbol, Struts, Synapse, Tapestry, Thrift, Tiles, Tomcat, TomEE, Turbine, Tuscany, Whirr, Wicket, Wink, ZooKeeper Obviously, this is subject to change depending on the activity level of various projects, and as PMCs request to be added/removed. Note that Traffic Server has already requested to be added. 6.Register selected TLP Int'l : $15,000.00 A few projects have such active communities and pressures from vendors attempting to leverage their brands that I believe we should register their product names in selected international jurisdictions. 7.Registrations of APACHE : $15,000.00 This would cover registering our house brand of APACHE in a number of international jurisdictions and dealing with attendant issues.
Board issue: please see two resolutions for an increased budget for Brand Management to meet our needs for our strategy change to use registered trademarks in many more situations. Operations And Community ======================== We had a much busier than usual month for questions and issues raised to trademarks@, and a number of issues will take some time to work with the relevant PMCs or third parties to fully resolve. A request to MapR correcting their poor use of the Apache HBase name was originally met with a less than acceptable response, but with an stronger restatement of our requirements resulted in quick action to correct the issues. A separate and much smaller request from the Apache Camel VP to Red Hat was unfortunately met with no substantiative response; while escalation to their senior trademark counsel was not as well received as I had hoped, I did establish a better communication channel for any future branding questions to that company. Updating Branding Strategy ========================== In reviewing more complex branding issues with our CouchDB, ActiveMQ, Camel, Hadoop, and CloudStack projects (as well as experience from past trademark enforcement actions), it has become clear that we need to make some changes to our overall branding strategy. I had a call with counsel from DLAPiper to discuss both our project branding strategy as well as matters relating to our overall Apache house brand, and they confirmed my ideas. Similarly, a thread on trademarks@ shows that the ability to defend our project brands is critical to our long term mission. Therefore, I am proposing that we improve our branding strategy by changing to registering most or all of the software product names that match our many Apache project names in the US. This change will require a notably expanded Brand Management budget going forward to meet our expected annual expenses relating to registering new podling/graduating TLP names, as well as a separate, much larger short-term budget which will be used to register our many existing TLP's names. I am very cognizant of our duty to take care in the use of the funds our many Sponsors (and donors) entrust to us. However I believe that this improvement in branding strategy is critical to ensure that we can effectively maintain our strong sense of independent community and our long-term ability to continue our mission. I will also note that in a number of conversations with Sponsors I have had that this ability to defend our brands is important in their minds as well. Trademark Registrations ======================= Counsel have made several registration applications in various jurisdictions for our APACHE overall "house brand". These registrations are part of a longer term effort to ensure our strong ability to defend our Apache brand itself. Separately, the USPTO issued a registration for our CLOUDSTACK product name on the supplemental register, and our efforts to secure the registration in Europe are progressing well.
No current board level issues. Stepped up trademark enforcements for several projects with good results. Added ea@ to the trademarks@ list and reviewed our two runbooks as we start to find ways the EA can assist with organizing answering issues on trademarks@. Sent [ACTION] Review your Apache project's brand use to pmcs@ with pointers to various updated and clarified PMC-related branding requirements to ensure that PMCs are aware of their responsibilities. Oddly, there were no comments directed back to trademarks@.
No board level issues. Progress on getting through the backlog of requests and podling name searches is going well. Otherwise a slightly busy month for trademarks but no major unexpected controversies. I have started documenting foundation/Brand/runbook.txt for common procedures in answering questions on trademarks@; in particular questions that either relevant Apache project VPs can answer themselves, or that members of the Trademarks Committee can answer directly. Similarly, the President has asked the EA to assist with monitoring the trademarks@ list, and she has started a set of "common questions and how to address" list which looks to be helpful in the future. I have a call with counsel shortly before the board meeting to discuss specific legal agreements for intake of trademarks, in particular to cover graphical logos. This is needed to ensure that we have clear trademark rights in the future for our projects, as we have seen in some cases where for-profit companies who at the start have the best of intentions, but over the long run change behavior to our detriment.
No board-level issues. Trademarks@ continues to run at a moderate pace; hopefully with my return from summer leave we will be able to improve this. Ross (+1!) has stepped in to push on improved guidelines for approving use of Apache project brands in events, documenting a basic process for pushing as much of the evaluation and approval process out to PMCs as is practical. This will be part of a larger effort to push more work out to PMCs. The first step will be to work with the Trademarks Committee to ensure we have a more detailed policies and very clear procedures for evaluating and approving brand-related requests of various kinds. We need to ensure that PMC members have sufficient information to understand enough of the larger issues around branding and trademarks to make informed decisions about specific kinds of requests that can be raised to trademarks@ for a NAK process similar to PMC changes. This will be a long term effort, both in documenting as well as in ensuring PMCs are informed. I am naming Christian Grobmeier and David Nalley to the Trademarks Committee in recognition of their helpful and thoughtful trademarks@ work.
Trademarks has had a moderate month, with basic questions being answered. Some needed brand policing actions are being queued up for next month. Burns & Levinson is ably supporting us in pursuing just the CLOUDSTACK trademarks both here in the US as well as in Europe. No board level issues; however, I may need to call upon operations@ folks to help provide better coverage for questions: at least having someone reliable get back to various questioners quickly with pointers to our policy and a "we're working on it" would go a long way.
A normal month for trademarks@, although a bit behind on resolving questions in the past couple of weeks. Thanks to Ross for updating various policy documentation to reflect that trademarks@ now handles all event-based branding approvals. DLAPiper has been doing plenty of registration and recordation work for us this month, including recording the change of ownership of various donated registered marks in key jurisdictions. Registration applications have been made for ACTIVEMQ and SERVICEMIX to replace earlier applications that timed out. OPENOFFICE application is being updated and re-submitted in Canada, which if successful would allow us to note that name is registered. SUBVERSION is being applied for "incontestability", which would ensure our very clear ownership of the name in the US.
No board level issues. Very busy month. * Operations And Community The trademarks list has been very busy this month, both with general questions and especially PODLINGNAMESEARCHes. That JIRA now sends notifications to the list, so we should not get behind in the future. There were more than the usual litany of brand questions, requests for approval, and potential complaints about poor use of Apache brands. It is clear both from the volume of requests on trademarks@, the types of questions, and the number of questions that include potential legal issues that Brand Management needs to make significant changes in how we operate. The commercial and technology impact of many Apache projects is growing very quickly, and is resulting in many commercial companies pushing the boundaries, both in cases where they blithely use (or misuse) Apache brands for their own purposes, as well as in cases where they (or their counsel) ask pointed questions as to how far they can take the use of our brands, in some cases at the expense of our communities. Similarly, discussing recent trademark questions with counsel has made clear that there are additional legal risks with how we allow use of Apache brands in some areas, in particular in how we approve incoming podling names and logos. As I am taking a 12 week leave from my employment this summer, I plan to spend part of that free time working with the trademarks committee to greatly update and improve both our policy, create detailed runbooks for processing questions and requests, as well as bootstrapping improved enforcement for a number of popular Apache projects. We also welcomed a couple of new member subscribers to tm@, welcome! * Registrations And Legal Issues Signed client engagement letter with new trademark counsel of Burns & Levinson, who will be appealing the technical denial of Citrix's attempt to register the CLOUDSTACK mark in the US and the CTO (EU). Thanks to the Cloudstack PMC in efforts to gather data of distinctiveness of the mark in short order at counsel request. DLAPiper has submitted US registrations for the ACTIVEMQ and SERVICEMIX trademarks. Hopefully they will proceed through the process and be registered in the ASF's name in a few months. Working with counsel to determine what issues in use of the JSPWIKI name exist for an Apache project due to a PODLINGNAMESEARCH. Working with counsel to greatly update our process for incoming grants for trademarks. Recent issues raised have made it clear that we will need to be much more rigorous in how we accepting incoming brands for podlings/products, including potential legal assignments.
No board level issues. For awareness, note that brand may need to request additional funding during the upcoming budget year. This primarily depends on both our ability to secure pro bono services of various levels, and especially how long it takes us to organize new trademark registrations. While I had planned to spend more of last year's budget, it took longer than expected to get balls rolling; however we should roll much faster this year. Amount < $20K, so should not be a fundraising concern. Trademarks has had quite a busy month with more than our fair share of controversies and reported potential infringements from a variety of projects. While I can understand that many of our development volunteers may want to see fast and decisive action on each of their perceived issues with third party use of Apache brands, we need to ensure that our brand enforcement is clear, correct, and effective; this takes time to analyze issues. Notable issues being worked on include branding use around Hadoop, HBase, log4j, CloudStack, OFBiz, OpenOffice, and CouchDB. It is clear both from the number of issues, how they are being brought up, the size and types of companies that they are dealing with, and advice from counsel that we will need to make a number of changes in our brand management procedures. These will include more thorough procedures around how our projects create their brands as well as how people report issues and how the Branding committee deals with issues.
No board level issues. The trademarks@ list has had a very busy month. Along with a number of podling name searches with a variety of questions, Christian Grobmeier and others worked to centralize an ASF-wide name search procedure. With the growth of the ASF and the wide number of ASF products and even sub-projects having such a large impact on the technology industry, we will need to be correspondingly careful when selecting new product brands for our many Apache projects. Early draft merchandising guidelines are being discussed; with so many projects in different areas we need to provide much better and simpler guidelines for the many volunteers and respectful organizations that simply want to give away t-shirts and swag with Apache project logos on them. This is a recurring question that we need a better way to answer. Infra created the vp-brand@ alias which is saved to a restricted archive, which will be used for legal privileged conversations with counsel. Brand Management submitted the same budget request as last year. While we under-ran our budget last year, we do expect (now that we have experience with how long things take) to use most of the budget this year. The Apache UIMA project has agreed to change the name of their newly created TextMarker sandbox component to avoid a potential legal conflict with a long-established and registered product name from the European company SoftMaker. It is important to understand that this is a unique situation, and in *no* way serves as a precedent for other Apache project name choices. It is clear from the wide variety of third party software products using the Hadoop name that we need to work with the vendor community to make some changes to ensure the Apache Hadoop project gets the credit it deserves. Apologies to the Apache Hadoop PMC for the delay in working through a plan with them after conferring with counsel from DLAPiper; I've been quite sick on and off for a few weeks.
No board level issues. I expect to submit the same annual budget request as last year. Overall questions to trademarks@ are up, and we've had a lot of podling name search queries lately, which are working fairly well, although it's clear from comments on the searches that the Incubator documentation is not as clear as it could be. The Apache UIMA project was contacted by Softmaker.de with a complaint [1] that the sandbox plugin release of Apache UIMA TextMarker software was a name conflict with SoftMaker's TextMaker word processing software, which is registered in several jurisdictions. ASF Counsel is preparing a detailed response, which will be sent directly to them via trademarks@. An independent third party contacted trademarks@ about an interesting idea for an Apache product logo on merchandise; we are working to get feedback from the relevant PMC. Trademarks@ will be working on improved and simpler merchandising policy for Apache brands, since this can be a great way to bring awareness when done in appropriate ways. Shane was contacted to join a new cross-OSS-project wiki that claims to want to offer suggestions for trademark polices for open source groups - if this gets some traction, it would be a great thing for all of us: http://modeltrademarkguidelines.org Shane spoke at ApacheCon NA to give "Managing Open Source Community Brands" which was well recieved and brought in a lot of good questions from Apache committers during the conference. [2] [1] https://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/uima-dev/201303.mbox/%3C513F5124.70209%40softmaker.de%3E [2] http://communityovercode.com/2013/02/apachecon-presentation/
No issues requiring board or President attention. I've caught up on replying to all outstanding questions, which run the usual gamut. A branding complaint was made by one company whose engineers work on a major Apache project about behavior in a private email sent from another company whose engineers work on the same project. This was addressed well by trademarks@ volunteers, but serves to show a couple of key points we need to continue to educate our communities about: - Branding issues are almost never immediate-time-sensitive. Unless the question is about physical media being printed for an in-person event happening within the week, branding questions can ALWAYS wait a few days to organize a response and deal with. - The ASF is responsible for enforcing brand use of the Apache brand(s). While we certainly very much appreciate third parties alerting us to potentially improper uses of our brands, it is NOT appropriate for third parties to directly work on enforcing Apache brands without our explicit consent. The Apache OpenOffice project has made a request that we lodge a complaint with certain search terms being used on Google AdWords that may infringe on our marks. They have examples of infringing sites using these marks to drive traffic, which is clearly a problem for this project with it's large end-user population.
No issues requiring board or president attention at the moment. We've had a higher than usual rate of general questions from third parties and from our PMCs. Overall this is a good thing, as we're starting to have more documentation available to point to, and many of the questions from PMCs (and especially most incubator podlings) are showing a slightly better understanding of branding issues. Shane is speaking at ApacheCon in Portland, both as a session and as a tutorial on How To Manage Your Apache Project Brand. This is a tutorial specifically aimed at PMC members and committers in terms of how to apply Apache Brand policy in real life. I hope to work with Concom to see if there's some way to provide discounted tickets to PMC members (a'la the press training provided by Sally in the past), since this providing better support to PMCs is a key Brand Management need. Tutorial: http://na.apachecon.com/schedule/presentation/203/
Operations And Community ======================== Ongoing work with the HBase PMC to address potential misuses of the HBase and Hadoop brands; progress is slow due to the holidays. My Managing Open Source Brands talk was accepted at ApacheCon NA, as was a similar tutorial focused specifically on helping Apache PMCs understand how to manage their brands. External Requests ================= Contacted by a third party claiming a potential conflict with a module name within an Apache podling. Awaiting more details from the third party before working with Legal on an official response. Clarifying Apache policy about transfer of pre-existing trademarks during the Incubation process. Fundamentally, the ASF needs full rights to any trademarks before graduation to TLP is approved. This needs to be better documented within the Incubator and in our public policies to ensure that new podlings with strongly held brands know what to expect. Trademark Registrations ======================= Working with counsel on ensuring a third-party registration of a mark for an incubating project is completed and transferred before graduation.
Operations And Community ======================== Name searches for Incubator podlings continue to come in; most are well researched. Actively working with several PMCs to assist in policing use of their names. We're still seeing a wide variety of familiarity (both good and not so good) with the PMC Branding Requirements and trademark basics across PMCs, so each case is very different in terms of how the community is understanding and dealing with the issues. External Requests ================= Commented on the transfer of a twitter account to a third party at the PMC's request (the mostly-unused @tapestry account to another unrelated, outside software project). As long as Apache marks are respected and general policies followed, PMCs are free to define how they promote their brands. Trademark Registrations ======================= Approved counsel to proceed with a required office action (with attendant discounted filing fees) for the OPENOFFICE registered trademark in Canada. Per counsel's suggestion, maintaining this registration is likely to strengthen our ability to defend marks related to Apache OpenOffice. Greg Stein provided SFLC with documentation of our payment for some past Subversion registration costs; SFLC were asking for Treasurer to provide actual receipts of payment.
Operations And Community ======================== Approved several new name searches for podlings readying for graduation; the new energy in the incubator is certainly helping with podlings being more organized on the branding front. External Requests ================= Responded to a higher number of third party requests this month, nothing unusual. Signed an agreement for use of one of our project marks in a major television series after working with counsel to update the agreement to something suitable. Trademark Registrations ======================= OpenOffice.org trademark registrations in Taiwan are recorded as being transferred to us. We plan to work with DLAPiper to record transfers in major markets where the pro bono rates make sense for the relevant projects.
Operations And Community ======================== Responded to a usual array of requests, including several book publishers who seem to be appreciating our FAQ entry for them. Approved the Airavata name for TLP; kudos to the PPMC there for doing very thorough research around the name! External Requests ================= Commented on a fundraising@ request that included an agreement that could have granted far too broad rights to our marks in a sponsorship agreement. Trademark Registrations ======================= Worked with DLAPiper to ensure past registration tracking from Sun/Oracle legal firms for OpenOffice.org registrations is fully transferred to us.
Operations And Community ======================== The Cocoon PMC has politely contacted several groups about potentially confusing names. The emails sent worked well, although one detail was misstated; trademarks@ will remind pmcs@ of the proper procedures with clearer documentation. The parties who have responded have done so favorably. External Requests ================= Waiting feedback from counsel on a request to sign agreement to use Apache OpenOffice software in a television production. The release form includes indemnification clauses which I'm not comfortable signing without legal review. This showcases a (minor) issue with having a major end-user consumer product at Apache: organizations who want to use our marks in non-traditional ways who wish to have legal releases beforehand. This is not a board issue, but is something to think about as the reach of Apache project grows. Trademark Registrations ======================= A [VOTE] confirmed my recommendation to *not* pay any fees to complete a previous OpenOffice.org registration in a small country in the Balkans. Sadly, only limited discussion on the amount of funding we are willing to spend on either registration recording, or registrations in non US/EU countries. Where we do choose to register marks, it will likely be only in the US and EU jurisdictions where appropriate and important for a specific project and for the ASF as an organization.
It is good for Apache to have its products mentioned in public productions. But Apache cannot indemnify producers. Perhaps we can write a clause that would satisfy producers as a substitute for indemnification. We have budget to engage outside legal counsel to write such a substitute clause, which we can then post on our web site.
Operations And Community ======================== I gave a talk "Managing Community Open Source Brands" at OSCON which was well received. I was surprised at how many OSCON attendees commented on the importance of this talk: a half-dozen people each said "wow, yeah, this is something we really need to do better". One attendee with legal experience noted that the outline in the talk (based on our brand management) was spot on with their experience with other trademark management processes. http://www.oscon.com/oscon2012/public/schedule/detail/24228 External Requests ================= AOO continues to be the most active project in terms of brand issues, working on both repackagers for portable software (USB sticks) as well as various media (movies, TV shows) requests for licenses. The previous user of an OpenMeetings domain name has responded favorably to requests to provide credit to the Apache OpenMeetings podling. Granted permission for use of the feather in a graphic for a small scale Lucene/Solr event. This is one of the cases where it makes sense to be flexible with logo use for the benefit of our communities. Trademark Registrations ======================= Completed agreement assigning "FLEX" registered marks from Adobe to the ASF. DLAPiper is completing work to fully track all dockets for our various registrations. They have a draft chart showing fees we would be responsible for if we choose to either renew or update the ownership of various trademark registrations we have inherited around the globe. While DLAPiper is working to cover many of these fees as pro bono, there are still many cases where there will be actual expenses in the $500 - $1000 range per jurisdiction. trademarks@ will soon need to better define our strategy re: where we plan to maintain registrations per project, so that we can better request the required budget in the future.
Operations And Community ======================== Worked with the AOO PPMC to review proposals for various requests, especially repackagers for mobile applications (run off of USB stick, etc.). External Requests ================= Several trademarks@ participants as well as members of specific PMCs have been providing responses to external questions (either on trademarks@ or from their projects) recently which is very helpful; often asking for clarifying information or refering to specific parts of our documentation that are related to questions. Trademark Registrations ======================= Working with DLAPiper on review of proposed assignment of "Flex" mark. Recieved three invoices from past trademark registration activities for the Subversion mark; working with counsel and Subversion PMC to verify how we should handle paying them.
Operations And Community ======================== Requests for assistance to review foundation/Brand/foundation-marks-list.csv have not met much success within the membership, so reviewing projects' compliance with branding requirements is taking longer than expected. Worked with Apache Archiva PMC to respond to a third party's apparent plans to rebrand from MailArchiva to Archiva. External Requests ================= Several requests have come in from OOo/AOO land about permissions to use AOO branding on various third party software download or CD-ROM sites. Working with AOO PMC to set requirements and guidelines to ensure such sites distribute proper AOO releases, without improper changes or additions. Approved branding aspects of Zeta Components podling community's desire to continue to use the Zeta name after they are retired from incubation, i.e. after IPMC explicitly confirms their podling retirement. Trademark Registrations ======================= "Hadoop" is now US registration # 4131061 - yay! http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=85377777 Have requested DLAPiper register "Lucene", and confirmed description with Lucene PMC.
Operations And Community ======================== Created spreadsheet of project branding status so that volunteers can work on reviewing Apache projects branding. Submitted budget request for trademark registrations and transfers. External Requests ================= I submitted a talk that was accepted at OSCON on "Managing Community Open Source Brands". Answered a small number of third party requests about branding use, including two for use on merchandise. Received a complaint about documentation issues on the Apache Jackrabbit and Apache Sling websites from an end user; Jukka responded with pointers. Trademark Registrations ======================= Awaiting final notice of Hadoop trademark registration from USPTO. Working with DLAPiper to get various existing trademark registration dockets organized in their tracking system.
Apologies for a late report. Operations And Community ======================== Calling for volunteers to work in an organized fashion to review branding status for all TLPs. It's clear that a more active approach with specific PMCs that have not reported completion is needed. Meeting with counsel from DLAPiper to work on reviewing basic policies, get cost figures (for next year's budget request which will be higher), and to organize which tasks that need counsel support versus can be done by volunteers with training. Worked with CouchDB PMC to make suggestions for the PMC to deal with specific Couch-* named product by third party. The recently detailed Incubator podling name search guidelines have been very helpful for several new podlings to review the suitability of their names in a organized fashion; many thanks to the IPMC members who put that guide together! External Requests ================= Signed release for use of Apache OpenOffice as set dressing in a major US company motion picture. Thanks to AOO PPMC for the approval and DLAPiper counsel for legal review. Trademark Registrations ======================= Waiting for meeting with DLAPiper, expect more news next month.
Operations And Community ======================== Thanks to the trademarks@ denizens as well as other members for some great commentary and suggestions in the past two months. External Requests ================= The usual end user questions; many this month are answered by FAQ entries. Trademark Registrations ======================= The Hadoop registration has been published in the USPTO register for its 30 day notice period! Waiting on legal-internal@ for counsel to make an application for another very popular Apache project (that has requested it). Checked in trademark-registrations.csv to begin tracking of various registered marks renewal, etc. dates.
Operations And Community ======================== Formally contacted Team OpenOffice.org e.V. again to insist that they correct their misuse of our OpenOffice.org brand. Approve request for Apache Rat's potential project name. Approved clarifications of Apache Extras project guidelines and package naming suggestions brought up in conjunction with ComDev; thanks to Chris Mattman, Benson, and others for their helpful work on the thread. External Requests ================= As usual, answered a handful of regular brand usage requests on trademarks@, typically by referring to our published policies and FAQs. FAQ drafts to provide answers for more common publishing requests are in the works. Trademark Registrations ======================= The CEO of Sonatype has agreed to assign the "Maven Central" mark registration to the ASF once their US application is completed, as part of the MOU the Maven PMC is working on with Sonatype.
Operations And Community ======================== The Apache OpenOffice podling has chosen that as their official name going forward (by a [VOTE]). The Apache OpenOffice podling, trademarks@, and press@ dealt with a number of potential misuses of the OpenOffice.org brand, in particular a fundraising campaign run by a German charity Team OpenOffice e.V.. Along with a number of private requests to Team OpenOffice, we've also issued an open letter to the larger ODF ecosystem to better tell the branding story of where OpenOffice.org and Apache OpenOffice are going in the future. https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/open_letter_to_the_open Special thanks to several of the Apache OpenOffice mentors who were working on the community and other aspects of this issue. External Requests ================= Team OpenOffice e.V. requested permission from the Apache OpenOffice podling to create a separate software product branded as OpenOffice.org. This request has been denied. As usual, answered a handful of regular brand usage requests on trademarks@, typically by referring to our published policies and FAQs. Trademark Registrations ======================= The existing Hadoop mark registration has been transferred from Larry Rosen to SFLC / Aaron Williamson as our contact attorney.
Operations And Community ======================== Robert Burrell Donkin has been doing some great work clarifying and simplifying the Incubator's trademark policies to ensure that new podlings are aware of brand and naming issues when they enter incubation - many thanks. While many trademarks policies could still use clarifications or more FAQ entries, much of the future work we will likely be doing on branding as relates to our own projects will be about best practices or suggested guidelines for projects, or for providing branding advice or help to projects that ask for it. I held a small but very useful Branding & Trademarks Meetup at ApacheCon. About 15 attendees had a great discussion, both in terms of sharing expectations and in terms of answering questions and making suggestions for documentation or procedure improvements. Thanks to all who attended - I think I learned as much as everyone else did! I created an "Apache Software Foundation" Google+ organization page. External Requests ================= Several regular trademarks@ participants have been starting to step up to answer simple third party questions, which I also appreciate. We should have some more FAQ's available soon that will help in this process (i.e. when a simple question that's already covered comes up, any Trademarks Committee members should be able to reply with a "please see this FAQ" email.) Working with the Lucene PMC to provide guidance on their email to a potential infringement of the Lucene logo. Trademark Registrations ======================= I will be working with VP, Legal to secure appropriate legal counsel (either pro bono or paid, as needed) to ensure that our trademark registration needs are met, both for the Apache mark and specific requested project marks.
Operations And Community ======================== UIMA and a third party asked for clarification of when TM is needed in logos. Current consensus is that it is important for the primary project logo, but not strictly required on other graphical branding elements, especially smaller logos or cases where the association is clear. Discussions about what a "distribution of Apache Foo" truly means, and how we should allow third party names in a similar style continue to crop up. While every case is unique, it's clear that given our limited resources, we need a general policy that is fair and appropriate to allow us to simplify the process for evaluating third party requests or uses of Apache marks in their product names. External Requests ================= trademarks@ is now receiving OpenOffice.org mark usage requests from the previous OOo website form. The issue of how to manage this mark is still not clearly decided, and trademarks@ will push to work with the AOOo podling to get a more concrete plan around its future branding. Similarly, the AOOo podling's work at identifying social media accounts that use aspects of the OpenOffice.org branding is another area where the AOOo project's end user focus and large, pre-existing brand is another area where our projects are requesting more guidance in terms of controlling our brands. Still waiting on the Maven PMC completing its work on maven.org domain name MOU and confirming it with Sonatype. (repeat from last month) Trademark Registrations ======================= A new registration for our Apache mark in various classes is being discussed with counsel.
Operations And Community ======================== Tomcat and trademarks@ have been working with a number of third parties to correct potential infringements or grant simple permissions. The Apache Flume podling has requested an evaluation of their project name vis-a-vis another registered mark; more feedback from people experienced with our trademark policy is needed to ensure we can provide projects with timely advice on naming issues. External Requests ================= Still waiting on the Maven PMC completing its work on maven.org domain name MOU and confirming it with Sonatype. (repeat from last month) Trademark Registrations ======================= Larry forwarded correspondence from Oracle dealing with past details of some OpenOffice.org trademark registrations. This will require coordination between trademarks@, legal-internal@, and ooo-private@ going forward, and speaks to the very large scope of the OpenOffice.org donation to the ASF, and to our future plans for ensuring we have the capacity to manage the many brands our projects now use.
Brand management is becoming a bigger issue with several projects trying to resolve trademarks, and wide variations of understanding Apache policy and appropriate responses to third parties.
AI Shane: prepare discussion for board face-to-face in Vancouver AI Shane: report on Apache trademark application next month
Operations And Community ======================== The Apache OOo podling has had a wide variety of discussions about the future of OpenOffice.org, both its code, its brand, and its domain(s). The question of the kinds of uses we will allow for the OpenOffice.org brand and domain name will be a key issue to resolve both for the Apache OOo podling as well as the large existing community of users. External Requests ================= Still waiting on the Maven PMC completing its work on maven.org domain name MOU and confirming it with Sonatype. (repeat from last month) Several parties have already contacted us requesting permissions for either new or continued uses of our new OpenOffice.org marks. Permission request from planetcassandra.org, a Cassandra blog aggregator run by a third party; expect to grant permission since they've done a great job branding it fairly. Trademark Registrations ======================= Larry has submitted the registration for the "Hadoop" mark; no status updates are expected for a number of months (the USPTO process is lengthy). I have signed trademark grant forms from Yahoo! for the Oozie mark and logo, and from Oracle for a wide variety of OpenOffice.org marks and logos. Much work will be in the years ahead tracking registration renewals, including minor budget request increases, and most importantly pro bono counsel time.
It was noted that the nofollow links policy is not yet finalized.
Operations And Community ======================== A number of PMCs are now using the Apache Trademark Reporting Guidelines to make first contact and work on branding issues with third parties using their respective marks. Working with fundraising@ on [PROPOSAL] of Apache Corporate Recognition Branding Policy [1] to address per-project Thanks! pages and other kinds of outbound links to commercial third parties. Much of this falls between fundraising@ and management of Sponsorship programs, and Branding in terms of how to document for projects website best practices. Worked with Concom on several third party event sites and approvals. External Requests ================= Still waiting on the Maven PMC completing it's work on maven.org domain name MOU and confirming it with Sonatype. The Hadoop PMC had a number of great discussions on what it means for a third party product to "include" or be "compatible" with Hadoop. This kind of discussion continues to cry out for a more detailed policy and a new options to the "Powered By" phrasing that we suggest third parties use for their products that include Apache products. Volunteers needed! Jim denied an independent developer's question as to using the name "Apache" in their webserver product. Imitation as a form of flattery? Trademark Registrations ======================= Trademarks@ is working with legal-internal@ on a number of registrations or transfers. In the future, we will need notably expanded EA and counsel assistance on managing registrations. SFLC reports that the "Apache" registration should be re-submitted shortly. Unfortunately no specific agreement has yet been reached with the third party currently using the name with respect to hardware. Larry has volunteered to submit the "Hadoop" registration; trademarks@ will coordinate with the Hadoop PMC. Oracle has volunteered to transfer a large number of OpenOffice.org related marks from around the world to the ASF. Trademarks@ is reviewing the specific transfer agreement to ensure it covers our concerns and expects to sign this shortly. Yahoo! is in the process of donating their Oozie mark to the ASF for the newly hatched Oozie podling, related to Hadoop; we merely await the signed paperwork. [1] http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/linking.html
Larry reports that the OpenOffice.org trademark assignment waiting Oracle's signature, and that the Hadoop registration application is waiting for dates of first use from PMC.
Operations And Community ======================== The Domain Name Branding Policy passed the [VOTE] and is final; the Tomcat PMC has already used this to work with the tomcatexpert.com domain holders to ensure their branding gives proper credit to our communities. Emailed pmcs@ reminding them to follow up and report on their branding progress, including linking to the newly published PMC Branding Responsibilities [1] and Apache Trademark Reporting Guidelines [2]. Several PMCs are also now using our sample contact letter for third parties using our marks [3]. A member erroneously forwarded a trademarks@ message to their employer, reportedly not realizing the list is privately archived. Sent a "trademarks@ private list etiquette" email to remind subscribers. Awaiting feedback on legal-internal@ of the status of (re-)starting trademark registrations for Apache and Hadoop. Note the registration for Apache was temporarily withdrawn while counsel work with a third party on a consent agreement for longstanding previous (non-infringing) uses. Thanks to Jukka for starting work on a feather with TM. External Requests ================= The Maven PMC continues to work productively with Sonatype on an MOU for the maven.org domain name and its use. The Tomcat PMC is doing a great job of policing their brand, and serves as an example of best practices. Note that they have an outstanding request to legal-internal@ needing assistance in contacting the unreachable developers of an iPhone app. Working with the Hadoop PMC on a number of third parties using our Hadoop mark in a wide variety of new ways. Yahoo! reports that they have completed updating all websites with the old "Yahoo! Distribution of Hadoop" naming which was requested earlier. Received information on some existing OpenOffice.org (a podling starting in the incubator) and Open Office (an unrelated product) trademarks, which trademarks@ will work with legal-internal@ to track when the podling is created. [1] http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/responsibility.html [2] http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/reporting.html
Operations And Community ======================== It is clear from a number of events recently that we still have a significant amount of work to do in explaining our branding policy both to our projects as well as to the many vendors who use our products. The Domain Name Branding Policy up for a [VOTE] to finalize which I hope to announce the results of immediately after the board meeting. I have asked legal-internal@ to begin the process of registering our "Hadoop" mark for our software product. External Requests ================= The Maven PMC has contacted Sonatype about their non-attribution of our Maven trademark, however Sonatype has not yet (as of this writing) responded. The PMC is also continuing work with Sonatype on the issue of the central repository oversight and branding issues. Concom has been alerted that Cloudera is planning to run their Hadoop World conference in NYC simultaneously with ApacheCon in Vancouver. While there is an agreement about their conference name, this points out the fact that we need to ensure that any brand licensing policies we have have very clear expectations and especially are carefully reviewed to ensure they cover all aspects that are important to our brand image and our communities health. Joyent based their new Trademark policy for Node.js on our formal policy as they blogged, which was a nice recognition of our work: http://blog.nodejs.org/2011/04/29/trademark/
Operations And Community ======================== Reviewing board reports shows that a number of projects have not actually reported a branding status update. Of projects that have reported status, most are nearing completion, except for adding TM's to graphics & logos. Will send followup to pmcs@ and will need assistance confirming that all projects report branding status in reports going forward until complete. Looking for more feedback/review of the draft Domain Name Branding Policy [1] before finalizing it and using that as the basis of a Service Naming policy. I urge all board members to review [1] and provide feedback on trademarks@, since I think it best expresses the ethos of how we want to allow uses of our marks in non-software product areas. External Requests ================= The Maven PMC has begun working directly with Sonatype on the management of the central repository Maven uses, which I believe is the most important issue to resolve. There are some other existing strictly branding-related issues to work on with Sonatype, which are progressing slowly due to lack of volunteer cycles. Assisting the Hadoop PMC on contacting several software vendors using our Hadoop mark in a variety of ways. Reviewed a trademark question from an aspiring musical rap artist who wants to name their band after one of our projects. [1] http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/domains.html
Doug asks whether VP Brand Management should identify the marks that we want to register. Shane replies that there are a small number of projects that we probably want to register. Shane asks how urgently the board wants to have all projects in compliance with branding policy. Greg replies that it's not urgent. Shane observes that we are tracking compliance.
One board-level issue: Discussion item 8.A: Trademark protection strategies. Operations And Community ======================== Published version 1.0 of Third Party Event Branding policy [1] after a vote on the concom@ list. Concom has signed an MOU with a third party in the past codifying their specific use of our brand(s) within their event, so any MOUs should specify the version number of the policy being conformed to. Worked with Concom on questions around Cloudera's Hadoop World, Yahoo!'s Hadoop Summit, and FuseSource's CamelOne events. Projects report good status on implementing Branding Requirements, although a large number of projects are either pushing back or having difficulty adding the TM to primary project logos. External Requests ================= Prepared a letter addressing Sonatype's use of our Maven mark in various cases and reviewed with Maven PMC. At PMC's request, awaiting feedback from Jim on his meeting with the Sonatype CEO first. Reviewed and did not object to Cloudera's new Hadoop-related product name, with some mixed consultation with the Hadoop PMC and counsel. [1] http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/events.html
One board-level issue: Discussion item 8.A: trademark policy ownership. Operations And Community ======================== Drafted Third Party Domain Names policy [1], based on trademarks@ discussion and the existing Event branding policy; I expect a forthcoming Third Party Services policy to be similar. An expanded "Rationale" or ethos behind our branding policy is likely to grow into a larger "Why our trademarks are important" document which should help third parties much more quickly explore uses of our marks that are acceptable. Began to use legal-discuss@ to request broader legal suggestions for specific kinds of brand policy questions. It is still difficult to get a large amount of feedback (either there or on trademarks@) for new policy ideas. Projects continue to report status on implementing Branding Requirements. Continued a number of discussions including private@maven relating to trademarks and especially use of "MVN" as a separate mark than "Maven", as well as clarified guidelines that plugin names may use different standards than full software product names. Many thanks to Brian and Brett for organizing many of the threads there. External Requests ================= Awaiting feedback from Jim on a meeting with the Sonatype CEO to determine next steps to address Sonatype's use of our Maven mark in various cases. Contacted a number of third parties about uses of Apache marks, including use in certified training classes, which is a new category of use. Greg as VP, Subversion contacted WANdisco on their use of our registered Subversion mark, with specific remediations requested. I'm looking forward to seeing how effective and timely Subversion's approach is, since the original email was very well written. Yahoo!, Cloudera, and IBM have all confirmed that they plan to change the branding of their respective "...Hadoop" products to conform to our policy. [1] http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/domains.html
One board-level issue: Discussion item 8.A: trademark policy ownership. Operations And Community ======================== Projects continue to report status on implementing Branding Requirements; we are making good progress so far although there is still a lot of work to complete. Updated the draft Third Party Event Branding Policy and sought consensus on promoting to final. Working with trademarks@ and legal-discuss@ on expanding the Event branding policy concepts to cover domain names and services. The primary mission of Apache is the distribution of software products for the public good; we need to clarify what our brand and marks policies are for other items, like services, that Apache and it's projects may not offer directly. Trademarks@ continues to discuss our "licensing" policy for recognizing third party uses of our marks that we approve of. This will be an ongoing issue for the year, both to define our branding policy, as well as to define any potential legal agreements we choose to make. Continuing work on private@ on followup issues related to Sonatype's use of our Maven mark and with the PMC to understand their expectations for our management of the Maven brand. Note that the Maven PMC's drafting of their own trademark guidelines is one of the reasons for discussion item 8.A above. External Requests ================= Contacted a number of third parties about uses of Apache marks; all are either cc:'d or bcc:'d to relevant PMC private@ lists. Greg is working with Legal Affairs to work on the appropriate action to take towards WANdisco's various mis-uses of our Subversion registered mark. Given Subversion's past corporate history, Greg is taking this on as VP, Subversion, although in the future we need to clearly document whether a PMC's VP or VP, Brand should be driving any legal-related actions around brand. Working with VP, Concom to finalise Event policies and issue appropriate approvals for upcoming third party events. External Meetings ================= Had a call with Cloudera's CEO to discuss their use of our Hadoop mark; call report sent to trademarks@ and private@p. They plan to comply with our requests for renaming their CDH product, although the rebranding work will take some time on their website.
One board-level issue: Sonatype's behavior around the Maven mark (below). No changes in Brand budget are currently expected. Operations And Community ======================== Projects continue to report status on implementing Branding Requirements and have brought good questions back to trademarks@ both about guidelines and about various third party uses. A bug was spotted in the Branding Requirements by the DB PMC: trademarks should be used as adjectives, and not nouns; this will be updated shortly and once a set of Trademark Policing guidelines is ready, will be pushed to pmcs@. Drafted and published a number of Trademark FAQ's to more easily cover specific types of third party uses of our marks. External Requests ================= Contacted a number of third parties about uses of Apache marks; all are either cc:'d or bcc:'d to relevant PMC private@ lists. Contacted a number of third parties using our Hadoop mark, both on general branding issues and in particular for Cloudera and Yahoo! about their use of Hadoop in software product names. Third parties in this case should look to our Powered By... guidelines: http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/faq/#poweredby Contacting several third parties about their use of our Subversion mark is on hold pending feedback and clarification over trademark policies with the Subversion PMC. Several third party non-product-related uses of Apache marks were brought up on trademarks@ this month. This both speaks to our popularity, and the fact that we have a central place for dealing with these issues. It also brings up some policy questions in terms of how actively we wish to pursue third parties, especially when they are not directly software product related. External Meetings ================= Jim, Larry and I had a call with the CEO and legal counsel of Sonatype to discuss both Sonatype's use of our Maven mark, as well as to clarify past statements by Sonatype's marketing officer. We came away with much more understanding of the positions of our two organizations relating to the use of our Maven mark, however not all issues were resolved.
One board-level request: potential funding for graphic designer (Discussion). Volunteer graphical design energy is historically difficult to find and especially keep active. Hiring/contracting a part time graphical designer could go a long way to improving the public image of our websites - both a.o and project websites. Key tasks: making a.o style actually look good; producing a proper set of feather image variants (including ones for inclusion on TLP pages); offering graphic design service to projects. Operations And Community ======================== Some positive reactions to the Branding Requirements have come back from PMCs, as well as a few discussions and improvements. Next step is to publish Trademark Policing Procedures to committers@ next month, so that all committers are aware of what to do about trademarks. Awareness of trademarks, both in general and allowable uses, seems to be widely varied across committers. I will contact projects about including the branding checklist in their quarterly reports until each project is updated. Discussed upcoming marks actions with several PMCs to get project feedback on various third party uses. Discussed many branding issues at ApacheCon with a variety of PMC members, and also with some external analysts. Requested RedMonk to assist on branding strategy as part of our existing engagement. Working with Subversion PMC to normalize trademark policy; they still have their legacy trademark policy from pre-Apache time posted. External Requests ================= Contacted third parties about the use of our Solr mark on their websites.
No board-level issues noted. [1] Operations And Community ======================== Apache Project Branding Requirements have been sent to pmcs@. The policy includes a checklist of brand-related items that PMC chairs are requested to include in their future quarterly board reports until their project is compliant. Projects were asked to comply with branding requirements by the end of Q1 2011. Several PMCs have responded with clarifying questions, as well as several reports of potential infringement of their products' marks by third parties, which will be followed up on trademarks@. I've also asked the Incubator PMC to work on updating the Podling guidelines to ensure they will match the branding requirements when new TLPs graduate in the future. External Requests ================= Requested assistance of VP, Legal and counsel to assist with potential misuse of our Maven mark; investigation is ongoing. I attended the Lucene Revolution conference and answered a number of questions at our booth about Apache branding. [1] Note that a number of trademark-related issues crossed over to board@ this month; please let me know on trademarks@ if the board has any specific response to issues.
The board discussed the ownership and possible misuse of the Maven brand, and Larry Rosen is involved in discussions with the lawyer.
AI Jim contact the CEO to try to resolve the issue.
No board-level issues noted. Operations And Community ======================== Submitted a [DRAFT] Event Branding Guidelines to concom@ to provide some much more specific rules for third parties running events using our marks; this is becoming a very popular question with many third parties wanting to run Apache project-branded or related events; some of the branding of these events is starting to cause concern. Apache Project Branding Guidelines still awaiting sufficient personal time to kickoff (kindergarten started last week!). External Requests ================= Answered several non-infringing questions from third parties. Received a new report of a third party in Indonesia mis-using our branding; will work with legal-internal@ as needed to review how best to file any appropriate complaints.
No board-level issues noted. Operations And Community ======================== Overall it was a very quiet month. Apache Project Branding Guidelines will be sent to to pmcs@ next month; delay due to lack of volunteer time this month. External Requests ================= A Lucene subproject approached trademarks@ asking about the suitability of their proposed Incubator podling name. The conversation was moved to legal-internal@ to discuss the specific legal issues around the name. An external vendor approached trademarks@ in relation to using the Tomcat logo on a button at events; working with concom@ to provide an answer since it's event-related.
Approved by general consent.
No board-level issues noted. Operations And Community ======================== Apache Project Branding Guidelines will be updated with minor clarifications based on feedback from trademarks@ and introduced to pmcs@ in the next month. Process of registering the "Apache" mark is in progress with counsel; I will follow up to see what updates to the main website are needed to reflect the status. VP, Subversion is working to formalize the previous "Subversion" trademark agreements made by Subversion Corp. previously with various organizations to reflect the assignment (and now management) of those marks to/by the ASF. External Requests ================= We received and replied to several questions about potential fraud using the Apache name. Apparently an organization in India has been using a number of variations of "Project Apache" or "Apache Project" either to sell software or as some sort of money making scheme. Several users emailed various lists at the ASF asking "Is this you?". I've replied to each noting that the ASF does not have a relationship with that organization; that our software is always available for free; and that only information at apache.org is official ASF policy. trademarks@ will be investigating reporting the offending domain names as infringing to their webhosts, and may ask legal-internal@ for further advice in dealing with this issue. Work continues with several organizations to correct infringements of our marks in association with websites and several products. While we need to ensure that our marks are respected, for organizations that show a willingness to improve, we should be cognizant that changes sometimes take time to complete.
No board-level issues noted. Operations And Community ======================== Apache Project Branding Guidelines are published but unexpected drains on time this month have delayed rollout to projects. Note that the "Subversion" registered trademark in the US has been transferred to the ASF from Subversion Corporation. Process of registering the "Apache" mark is still in progress with counsel. The primary committers of the Apache iBATIS project have forked the code, and have re-branded their follow-on project as mybatis and mybatis.net at http://mybatis.org/. Brian Fox of Apache Maven is ensuring that the primary Maven POM groupID of org.apache.ibatis is still controlled by the ASF. External Requests ================= Answered various non-infringing related questions; other than some confusion around iBATIS, it was a reasonably smooth month. Work is in progress with several organizations and one individual to correct infringements of our marks in association with websites and several products. Other corporations are receptive to our requests for updating their use of our marks, although in some cases the process seems to be a lengthy one.
Board-level item: See discussion item A; I'd like to ensure the board is on board with these guidelines. Operations And Community ======================== Published complete draft of Apache Project Branding Guidelines that will be rolled out to projects shortly (see discussion item A). Asked legal-internal@ to begin process of registering the "Apache" name as a trademark with USPTO. I plan to similarly register the feather as well in the future once we clean up the graphics. This is part of my plan to ensure that we're clearly marking and claiming our own trademarks. Asked for volunteers on site-dev@ to add a "TM" to the feather graphic and on other top-level sites. Asked legal-internal@ for details of ensuring trademark rights of logos, including a specific case related to a project logo. Conduct internal [POLL] and determine that the ASF should accept donations and maintain registrations of existing well-known domain names containing our marks that PMCs wish to maintain as pointers to their projects. External Requests ================= Answered various non-infringing related questions, including suggesting best practices changes on Apache project websites. Work is in progress with several organizations to correct infringements of our marks in association with websites and a product. Working with Hadoop PMC to determine proper use of potential new security-related trademark which is also being requested for outside (i.e. third party) use in relation to events and other giveaways.
The document being reviewed can be found at http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/pmcs/
No board-level issues noted. Operations And Community ======================== Published first of many trademark usage FAQ's that should greatly simplify future end-user questions. Similarly checked in overall ToDo list to encourage more committee participation. Approved and created JIRA to get the donated ofbiz.org domain name transferred to the ASF so we can continue to point it at the project. External Requests ================= Answered various non-infringing related questions. Worked with Microsoft, Red Hat, and Yahoo! in conjunction with Noirin as VP, Concom to ensure appropriate usage of our marks at specific third party run events. Work is in progress with two organizations to correct infringements of our marks in association with a website and a product.
Compliments to Shane on running this function smoothly.
No board-level issues noted. Submitted a small budget to cover registration of select ASF trademarks. Operations And Community ======================== Sally/Serge/Shane f2f meeting now scheduled for next week, which should allow us to publish more ideas and guidelines in our areas. Seeking more input on trademarks@ on branding and marks principles. External Requests ================= Answered various non-infringing related questions. Many thanks to Larry and Legal PMC for beginning work with Eclipse on an understanding about the Eclipse Scout and Apache Scout projects. This points out that part of our key branding guidelines includes the use of Apache in our project and product names.
No board-level issues noted. Expect a small (<$5,000) budget request from Brand Management for select trademark registrations. Operations And Community ======================== Submitted draft principles for brand management and trademark licensing, along with a preliminary list of Trademark FAQs to the trademarks@ list for discussion. February meeting with Sally and Serge to work out details of PRC break up was postponed to later in Feb due to bad weather. External Requests ================= Answered various non-infringing related questions. Acknowledged existing merchandising policy in relation to request for shirts for the community from an ASF member. Forwarded a potential name conflict with Apache Scout (a subproject of Web Services) to Eclipse in relation to their proposed new Scout project. Approved transfer of Subversion registered trademarks to the ASF, asking ASF counsel to arrange the details. Working with Lucene PMC to better clarify policy relating to potentially commercial links on project websites, when used in relation to services requested by the community.
No board-level issues noted. Operations And Community ======================== Policy discussion quieted down over the holidays, but is expected to pick up soon to better define our trademark guidelines. Apache Pivot was warned about a potential trademark conflict with a Microsoft project named Pivot (that they appear to have applied for a registered trademark on), however the PMC preferred to keep their name. Our previous two SpamAssassin trademark registrations were allowed to go abandoned (last month; was omitted from SpamAssassin report). Given the well-established use with our software product, I don't believe this will be an issue going forward. Planning on attending February meeting with Sally and Serge to work out details of PRC break up, including budget and responsibilities. External Requests ================= Answered various non-infringing related questions. VP, Concom signed the Memorandum of Understanding between the Apache Software Foundation and Cloudera with regard to Hadoop World, after consulting with counsel and trademarks@. The agreement is for a year, at which point both our overall trademark use guidelines and any event-specific guidelines (worked out in conjunction with Concom) should be well defined, ensuring that any future agreements comply with our overall guidelines.
Shane clarified that the F2F with Sally and Serge will be in the Boston area.
Issues for board attention ========================== See agenda item 8A. Notices to the board ==================== I've formed an Officer's committee to assist in Brand Management, comprised of Upayavira, Jukka Zitting, Craig L Russell, Grant Ingersoll, Noirin Shirley, Jim Jagielski, Lawrence Rosen and Doug Cutting. Operations And Community ======================== Created trademarks@ as our operational mailing list for managing trademarks; this is privately archived, member subscribeable, and used to discuss policy and to answer external requests about marks; there are currently 21 members subscribed. We're in the process of moving trademark-related discussions to this list instead of prc@. We plan to use site-dev@ for issues relating to "look and feel" branding, in conjunction with VP, Marketing and Publicity. Discussed a proposal for new Powered By logo guidelines, and hope that more projects will adopt official Powered By logos. Larry drafted a nice "here's a reminder of our policies" default email for use as a base to answer trademark use requests, which was used for the TomcatExpert request below. Bertrand wrote a Foundation blog entry educating the public that the ASF only publishes official information on the apache.org or apachecon.com domains, and that web content on any other domain is not from the ASF itself. This is to address the issue of both potential fundraising websites and other community support websites that are run by others. External Requests ================= Answered various non-infringing related questions. SpringSource notified us of their plan to launch tomcatexpert.com, a community support and information site for Apache Tomcat. After reviewing the site and asking for some specific changes, sent SpringSource our default email, with a reminder to respect our marks. IBM asked if they could use a modified but obviously Apache Hadoop elephant logo in a IBM logo of theirs for an unspecified project. The request was denied, because it would be a clear infringement of the actual Hadoop elephant that identifies our software product.
WHEREAS, the Board of Directors deems it to be in the best interests of the Foundation and consistent with the Foundation's purpose to appoint an officer responsible for Brand Management, including but not limited to management of the ASF's trademarks, service marks, and related ASF logos. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the office of "Vice President, Brand Management" be and hereby created, the person holding such office to serve at the direction of the Board of Directors, and to have primary responsibility of managing the ASF's trademarks and brand; and be it further RESOLVED, that Shane Curcuru be and hereby is appointed to the office of Vice President, Brand Management, to serve in accordance with and subject to the direction of the Board of Directors and the Bylaws of the Foundation until death, resignation, retirement, removal or disqualification, or until a successor is appointed. Special Order 7F, Appoint a Vice President of Brand Management, was approved by Unanimous Vote of the directors present. The board further acknowledges that officer's committee was established to assist in this work, initially consisting of: Upayavira, Jukka Zitting, Craig L Russell, Grant Ingersoll, Nóirín Shirley, Jim Jagielski, Lawrence Rosen and Doug Cutting.
Brian Beck (Bradford Learning) and Jim Harter (Covalent) are seeking permission to use the Apache feather logo for Web-based training courses on Apache 2.0. The logo appears in similar fashion and location in each module throughout the course. Bradford Learning and Covalent Systems are co-developers of this course. The usage is in a Flash graphic, with http://www.bradfordlearning.com/wts/ being a typical example (use the pre-filled login). By unanimous vote, this request was approved. Dirk volunteered to be the contact point for this request. It was suggested that Dirk inquire on the feasibility of Bradford Learning actually donating the graphic to the ASF.
The following resolution is proposed:
RESOLVED, that the Apache Software Foundation approves use of
the Apache feather trademark by Lars Eilebrecht for the purpose of
an Apache httpd reference card.
The resolution was proposed and seconded, and was voted upon. The
resolution was approved by unanimous vote of all directors present.
Tripwire has requested written approval to use the Apache name
in a new product implemented as a plugin module for the Apache
HTTP server. The name would be
"Tripwire for web pages, Apache edition, powered by Covalent"
This request has been granted. The ASF will await the formal written
request to be received, at which point Jim will sign and return.
See foundation/Licenses/Covalent-PB.txt This request has been granted. The board recognizes that Jim has sent the required authorization to Covalent.
Dirk suggested that we should make an effort to officially register the use of Apache and the multi-colored feather as an ASF trademark. This led to a general discussion about retaining counsel for the ASF (next item) and will be postponed until such time as that relationship is established.
This item was tabled in the interests of time.