Re: MAME emulator is giving incentive to use non-free software

[Jean Louis]

Hello Ludovic,

You do need legal counsel my friend. I suggest you ask for help of few
attorneys from FSF to help you with understanding on what trademarks are
and how they can be used to demand control over their rights.

Nintendo trademark in the package is certainly wrong. Not even the
author is advertising in that manner the package. Did you go to author's
page to see that there is no trace of "Nintendo" on the page?

The point is of legal nature. It is not based on opinions.

I have given you enough clues by which you can seek legal counsel and
true legal advice.

Keep in mind, by this way, "Nintedo Emulator" is still endagering GuixSD
system as such, including all other users who wish to copy it, as it is
open to attacks. Same with MAME. That is of enough clue to be concerned
and to ask truly legal advice. I am paralegal assisting attorneys in
registration of trademarks.

For sake of responsibility of what is distributed and understanding how
it can affect multiple people worldwide, it is better doing what I am
suggesting. Seek advice.

Jean Louis

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 03:14:32PM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> > For your understanding:
> >
> > - I cannot just take your package definition and copy it on my website,
> >   because it includes trademark, it is simply not free description of
> >   the package. It asks for problems in future, with Nintendo. 
> >
> > - I cannot sell the package or that software, neither provide support,
> >   in that shape or form, with the trademark Nintendo® because I don't
> >   have permission for that.
> >
> > - a software definition cannot be just made up with trademarks,
> >   especially not with well known trademarks, and claimed to be GPL
> >   licensed
> >
> > - software using trademarks within the source is also questionable.
> 
> I respectfully think that this interpretation is incorrect.
> 
> GPL software is certainly free, trademark or not.
> 
> The FSDG item linked above is implicitly concerned with trademarks that
> relate to the name of the software package, as is the case with Firefox
> and (apparently) MAME.  These are free software packages, but we may not
> be allowed to distribute them under these names.  We still get the 4
> freedoms, obviously, as long as changing the name is trivial (for
> instance Firefox has a ‘configure’ switch for that.)
> 
> IIUC, the Nintendo emulators we’re talking about mention “Nintendo” in
> their synopsis, but that is most likely a legitimate use of the
> trademark—just like mentions of “Intel”, the “X Window System”, etc.
> 
> IMO, a valid reason why we could discuss exclusion of these packages is
> if they do not have any other use than playing non-free games.  I guess
> this is an important use case, but I don’t know if it’s the only one.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Ludo’.