Reply-To: <ggd@iplawyers.com>
From: "G. Gervaise Davis III" <ggd@iplawyers.com>
To: "'Jeff Licquia'" <jeff@luci.org>,
        "'Clemmitt Sigler'" <siglercm@alphamb2.phys.vt.edu>
Cc: <pmitros@MIT.EDU>, "Linus Torvalds (E-mail)" <torvalds@transmeta.com>
Subject: RE: LSA Site
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 10:11:49 -0700
Message-Id: <000d01bdd2a6$f22c1020$1de7e3a5@lexbert.iplawyers.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.980827234116.21132A-100000@web1.lanscape.net>
Importance: Normal

Thanks for your email which lets me know what is happening out there. This
situation has really gotten out of hand.  Mike's comments are not entirely
wrong, but misstate the situation badly.  Unfortunately, I cannot in a
public forum go into the detail of what happened and who said what because
it could damage the interests of a number of people. I like to think the
Linux community can get on with it and drop all this angry and non
constructive interchange.

In this matter I was representing Linus and Linux International and a group
of other Linux companies that were in effect a class action to cancel the
original false registration.  We had a number of choices in dealing with it,
and as it happened the simplest was to take an assignment of the mark rather
than finish the expensive and time consuming process of cancellation which
would have taken three years, followed by filing another registration.
Optimally, Linus or someone on his behalf should have registered the mark
earlier in the US and elsewhere, which would have given us an earlier first
use date.

In summary, the Linux mark is a valid trademark in both the US and a number
of European countries. It is not registered elsewhere although it should
be - like China, etc.  I know it is in process in Japan.

Linus and I are discussing, soon, what needs to be done to protect the mark
and the development of a very simple licensing program. Hopefully, that will
be put together in a few months, so we can end all this discussion,
hopefully.

Gerry
G. Gervaise (Gerry) Davis III  --  Business and Intellectual Property Lawyer
DAVIS & SCHROEDER, a California professional law corporation
215 West Franklin Street, 4th Floor, Monterey, California  93940
P.O. Box 3080,  Monterey, California  93942-3080
Voice:  408.649.1122  --  Fax:  408.649.0566
Email:  ggd@iplawyers.com  --  Firm Web Site:  www.iplawyers.com


-----Original Message-----
From:	Jeff Licquia [mailto:jeff@luci.org]
Sent:	Thursday, August 27, 1998 9:54 PM
To:	Clemmitt Sigler
Cc:	pmitros@mit.edu; ggd@iplawyers.com
Subject:	Re: LSA Site

(Mike taken out.  He's had time to respond.)

On Thu, 27 Aug 1998, Clemmitt Sigler wrote:

> On Thu, 27 Aug 1998, Jeff Licquia wrote:
> > One thing I thought I should point out: Mike McLagan may have talked to
an
> > attorney concerning the "Standard Linux" and "Linux" trademarks, but it
> > certainly wasn't the attorney who handled the "Linux" trademark issue
with
> > Della Croce.
> >
> > How do I know?  That attorney was G. Gervaise Davis, quoted by McLagan
as
> > the lawyer who responded to him from Linux International.  Davis was the
> > one who handled the Linus/WGS/LI/etc. side of that debate, and who
> > eventually got the trademark assigned to Linus.
>
> There can be no misinterpretation of these words.  McLagan said that
> the above mentioned G. Gervaise Davis had been hired by him, and had
> also given him the advice that the Linux (R) mark was invalid.  Does
> anyone have an e-mail address or other contact information for Mr.
> Davis?  I would be happy to talk to him to try and verify what Mr.
> McLagan told me in his e-mail.

I didn't think so, but I've been wrong before. :-)

Davis is at ggd@iplawyers.com.  (From the Linux International press
release, FWIW.)

I'm CC'ing Mr. Davis on this, since I'm sure he'd be interested to hear
what people are quoting him as saying.

Mr. Davis: Mike McLagan has stated in private E-mail that the lawyer who
freed the Linux(R) trademark advised him that the trademark was invalid.
As I understand it, that would be you.  This would be especially
surprising, since you were also quoted by McLagan in other E-mail as
advising him that the trademark was not valid.

The site where this information could be found (including the full text of
the letters) is http://badragaz.ai.mit.edu/lsa/.  Look for the letters on
the Linux trademark and those from Clemmitt Sigler.

I'm sure you (and we all) would like to put this whole LSA thing behind
us.  But I'm sure you'd agree that lies in such an explosive subject
shouldn't be left unanswered; thus my responses.

Thanks for all of your help assisting the Linux community.