Re:Hacker News India
by alextgordon on Wednesday November 17, 2010 @08:24AM
(#1914098)
I may be wrong, but "Hacker News" does not appear to be trademarked in the US. And the code is open source. So which particular laws are being broken here?
Re:Hacker News India
by dogofthunder on Wednesday November 17, 2010 @08:59AM
(#1914192)
the existence or non-existence of a trademark registration filed with the USPTO doesn't necessarily mean that the name is trademarked or not. registration helps when you're suing, but trademark rights can attach without registration.
Re:Hacker News India
by alextgordon on Wednesday November 17, 2010 @09:16AM
(#1914259)
But there's other sites using the HN name, presumably without permission (e.g. hackernewsers.com). Surely if PG did sue, his case would be quite weak.
It also occurred to me that hackernews.in is clearly a website aimed at Indians, so I don't know to what extent US law applies.
Anyway, it seems that the name is going to be changed, so this whole trademark point becomes moot. http://hackernews.in/item?id=375
You should respect the law and change the name or take the site offline until you receive appropriate permissions.
Please note that even licenses as GPL or MPL (that govern the Firefox code for example) give you permission to use the code, not the trademarks of the project. Ubuntu had to make a Linux package called "abrowser" ( https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/lucid/+package/abrowser ) simply because Mozilla didn't agree with branding their modifications as "Firefox".