Liquid Fire Posted September 3, 2009 Share Posted September 3, 2009 Now I know I can use the © and ™ marks without having to register anything with the government, the only symbol I can't use is ®, but is it really worth while to spend the money of registering a name for open source software. I am building a PHP framework and set of jQuery plugins and I am currently housing them under the same project name. Just wondering what I really gain by registering the trademark. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrg_alpha Posted September 3, 2009 Share Posted September 3, 2009 As far as the registered trademark issue is concerned, you would have to consider the benefits it offers and see if it is worth it to you (this means looking into what those benefits are). Relating to my country (Canada), failure to make a name a registered trademark means that someone else in another province could use the same name as mine.. but if registered, this locks in exclusive rights for the name through out the entire country. The drawback is that the process can be long (here it takes approximately 2 years from start to finish) and costs money, with the requirement to a) pay a new renewal fee every 15 years (I think it's 15 years), and b) that registered trademark must be exercised (in otherwords, if you don't make money off of it (legal, taxable money that is), you can lose those rights - advertising the registered trademark doesn't constitute as 'exercising' that trademark. I'm sure you can find your country's legal info on this matter on some website. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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