SFC and SFLC Fall Out over Trademark Cancellation Petition

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) and the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) have fallen out publicly over a filing by SFLC seeking cancellation of the SFC’s trademark due to confusion between the two.

The SFC posted about it here.  The posting says the SFLC took ” the bizarre and frivolous step of filing a legal action…seeking cancellation of Conservancy’s trademark….We are surprised and sad that our former attorneys, who kindly helped our organization start in our earliest days and later excitedly endorsed us when we moved from a volunteer organization to a staffed one, would seek to invalidate our trademark.”

The SFLC’s response is here.  It describes the SFC posting as “a puff of near-apocalyptic rhetoric about us…published by SFLC’s former employees, Karen Sandler and Bradley Kuhn, who now manage the Conservancy, which was originally established and wholly funded by SFLC, and still bears our name…”

I will write up some legal analysis of this intermural dispute, right after I have taken care of more important things, like leveling up all of my characters in Disgaea 5.*

*For the benefit of those more sensible than me: the playable characters in this game are essentially unlimited, and the process of leveling them up takes essentially forever.

UPDATE: Here is some interesting additional commentary by Karl Fogel.  But I am still leveling up.

UPDATE:  Interesting article in the Register describes some background about the differing ideologies of SFC and SFLC.

Author: heatherjmeeker

Technology licensing lawyer, drummer

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