Re: [Freeciv-Dev] re: copyrights etc.

[Mitch Davis <mjd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

John Goerzen wrote:
> 
> First, nobody has trademarked "freeciv" so this itself does not
> violate any laws.

Freeciv _is_ a trademark, and we hold it; it's so because we
actively use it and defend its use.  The difference between
Freeciv and Coke[tm] or Unix[tm] is that they are registered
trademarks, whereas ours is not.

Unless a company or organisation vigorously and actively defends
a trademark, that trademark can be lost, and may be used as a
generic term.

Registering a trademark is one of many ways a company has of
ensuring that its trademark is defended, which is why companies
do it.

Trademarks and trademark law is of course different from patents,
which is different from copyright, which is different from
intellectual property.

> The only real way that somebody could sue anybody about is if
> freeciv directly uses components from some non-GPL software
> in it.  To my knowledge, it does not, so I am not seeing any
> real legal harm anywhere.

If a company sued for this reason, it would be over breach of
copyright, not over breach of trademark.

I'll run briefly over these four areas.  (Or at least, my
understanding of them)

- Trademarks.

  A trademark is the right to use a certain name or phrase to
  label a product.

  We'd be in breach of trademark if we described our program _as_
  Civilisation, rather than "compatible to a certain extent with
  Civilisation[tm]".  We don't assert that Freeciv is 
  Civilisation[tm], so I believe we're safe there.

- Patents.

  Patents are granted for published tangible ideas or device plans
  to which the discoverer (or licensees) have exclusive rights to
  manufacture.

  It is possible to patent an algorithm, but not an idea.  
  We don't knowingly use any Microprose-patented algorithm
  (are there any?), but we have borrowed many ideas, which
  are not patentable.

- Copyright.

  Copyright is the right of the recognised author of a
  creative expression (such as a story, a picture, a song,
  or a piece of software) to permit or forbid copying of that
  expression.

  The content of Civilization[tm] is copyright.  Microprose
  says you get a license to use the software, and that you
  may not copy it (although my CivNet didn't come with a
  license agreement, and Activision wouldn't send me one,
  even though I asked).

  As John has said, Freeciv would be in breach of copyright
  if we had taken any part of Civilisation, including code,
  graphics, content off their website, etc, and put it into
  Freeciv.  To the best of my knowledge, we haven't, so I
  believe Freeciv is safe here.

  Freeciv is also copyright, which means that no-one can take
  our code and call it their own.  We also distribute it under
  a license which _permits_ people to copy it, in certain ways.

- Intellectual property.

  Intellectual property is proprietary knowledge which gives
  a company a competitive advantage, but would become worthless
  if revealed.  This can include strategies and unpublished trade
  secrets.

  We don't know anything about Microprose or Civilisation
  except what has been made public, so we cannot breach
  intellectual property.

Personally, and as representative of The Freeciv Project,
my highest priority is to ensure that Freeciv does not breach
any right of any other company or project.  If someone
brought a breach to my attention, I would immediately
rectify it.  This happened a couple of months ago, when some
copyright graphics were placed on the Freeciv FTP server:
I immediately took steps to prevent this, and asserted our
position.

One of the reasons I say this is so Microprose know that we
want to do the right thing.  If they play nice with us, we
should try hard to play nice with them.

> Having said that, I Am Not A Lawyer.

I Am Not A Lawyer, Nor Do I Play One On TV!

:-)

This issue crops up every couple of months, so I think
I'll put this on the web.

> > Not that I intend to buy it. All my friends have CD toasters.
> 
> That comment is probably more dangerous than anything else
> I've seen here :-)

Smiley noted.  However, it's a personal opinion, and not that
of the Freeciv project.

There are some excellent FAQs on this around the net.
See http://www.faqs.org/faqs for more information.

Regards,

Mitch.