Liblime seeks trademark for an open source product created by an NZ library | Hacker News Reader

Liblime seeks trademark for an open source product created by an NZ library

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64 pointsTsagadai30 comments

I'm surprised the Maori Advisory Board of the Intellectual Property Office hasn't blocked this on the grounds that 'koha' is a Te Reo Maori word (translated as gift or offering). They tend to be highly protective of the language as it's considered to be taonga (treasure).

I'd be surprised if it turned out they had any say in the matter. Imagine if the proud and venerable Brî'tíšh people had the power to block the usage of such words as "Windows" to describe a software product.

Usage is one thing, trademark is another. And what pertains in the British Isles does necessarily pertain in New Zealand.

The title here misrepresents the article. It doesn't say the New Zealand library is being sued. On the contrary, the article says they are raising money to oppose a trademark application.

It wasn't my intention to be misleading, I just misread. I've updated the link.

Thanks, it helps the cause to stick to the facts.

from the article:

"The situation we find ourselves in, is that after over a year of battling against it, PTFS/Liblime have managed to have their application for a Trademark on Koha in New Zealand accepted. We now have 3 months to object, but to do so involves lawyers and money. We are a small semi rural Library in New Zealand and have no cash spare in our operational budget to afford this, but we do feel it is something we must fight.

For the library that invented Koha to now have to have a legal battle to prevent a US company trademarking the word in NZ seems bizarre, but it is at this point that we find ourselves."

Actually, the US trademark was being held by the former owners of LibLime (Metavore, Inc) in trust for the community. It was used as a bargaining chip against the wishes of the community in the acquisition of LibLime by PTFS in 2010.

The community really got riled up about this in 2010, and all other community trademarks and IP were transitioned to HLT ownership as stewards of the community IP. They own the current domain (http://koha-community.org) and the French trademark (the French company, Biblibre, was holding the French trademark in safekeeping for the community, and paid to have the trademark transferred to HLT's control). There were talks in 2010 of PTFS "allowing" the community to "use" the koha.org domain under their supervision, but it was clear that they wanted editorial control over the site and so it was decided to abandon koha.org.

The NZ trademark fracas has been going on for a solid year now, Metavore (LibLime) had filed for the trademark in NZ not more than a few weeks before they sold themselves to PTFS. PTFS could have chosen to withdraw the application, but chose not to. Joann Ransom, director of HLT explains it all on Radio NZ quite clearly: http://ur1.ca/5zz67

The line PTFS gives is that the trademarks were purchased from LibLime who bought them fair and square from Katipo - which is fair, they did. But they were allowed to register trademarks with the understanding from the community that the assets would be held in good faith, and they have not been - they have been hijacked.

Koha is a gift that HLT gave libraries the world around, and PTFS/LibLime has taken undue advantage of that gift, abusing the community they purport to be a part of.

More appropriate for Reddit - however being a Kiwi (and someone who once had a trademark problem) I find it amazing the Maori Advisory Board had no problem (I think 'shame on them') and wonder why they did not object. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koha_(custom) seems to be a common enough term.

I found this, from January 2010 (note the "including the US trademark"):

LibLime (which is actually a trade name of Columbus, Ohio based Metavore, Inc.) was started in 2005 by Joshua Ferraro, Tina Berger and two others. LibLime has been the hardest-charging and fastest-growing proponent of the Koha Library System in the world. Over the intervening years, LibLime has acquired key Koha-related assets, including the US trademark, copyrights to Koha source code, and the Koha website. The combination of PTFS and LibLime will be supporting 640 installations of Koha under 123 contracts

http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2010/01/ptfs-to-acquire-li...

If that was in 2010, why is it a big issue now?

Because this is about the NZ trademark.

http://elliottbledsoe.com/2011/11/keep-koha-trademark-open-s...

Yes, but why does that matter?

I understand that the author is from NZ, and the software originated there, but surely the time to object was when the original (presumably US?) trademark was issued? Or at least some outrage could have been expressed at that point?

How are the Horowhenua Library Trust meant to know when the US trademark is issued? I can't imagine they're keeping an extremely close eye on all the trademarks being issued over there.

The author of the blog post clearly follows the field.

In their own country, of course they do, im not sure why you are so set on straw manning, but hey, whatever floats your boat

The first trademark was issued in Europe. BibLibre were responsible stewards and thus no objection was raised at that point. They acted as they stated they would: they applied for the TM on our behalf, received it, and were generous enough to sign it over to HLT at their expense.

Outrage was expressed over the US trademark and still is to the current day. It would be interesting to see how US courts find in this department.

The big issue is how little has changed; when I wrote that, I expected that the various koha stakeholders would recognize that they were all forced to live in one big tent, so finding accommodations would benefit all. But maybe the taniwha is being disturbed.

http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2010/01/who-owns-koha.html

The Maori Language Commission are going to be all over this like a ton of bricks, 'koha' is such a generic word here (my best guess is that it sort of means 'wilful donation' in English)

I'd like to hear more about this from the other side. Someone on the original thread has commented to the effect that the library permitted the contractor ("Katipo"?) who wrote the software in the first place to sell the IP to the people who are seeking the trademark... No idea if that's true, of course, and really, why try to trademark it in the place it came from? But still, I'd like to know more.

There's a long, convoluted history of issues between the Koha community and Liblime over community 'assets', some of which is summarised here: http://lwn.net/Articles/386284/

LibLime acquired the Koha portions of Katipo Communications back in 2007, including the koha.org domain name and other assets. The Koha community subsequently had to move to koha-community.org.

"Had to" because Liblime stopped sharing access to the site, something which they had promised to do when taking over maintenance of it (get it in writing next time). Koha.org now exclusively promotes Liblime's non-open fork of Koha.

PTFS/LibLime's "non-open fork" of Koha is available on Github: https://github.com/liblime/LibLime-Koha. We gratefully accept pull requests and bug reports there, as well. We're pushing yet another release there next week.

Shortly after the acquisition of LibLime, PTFS offered up the koha.org domain for sale to several community members, including HLT and other vendors, as a means of hopefully rectifying the relationship with them. No one bit, so we've retained it.

Citation needed, can you point to evidence of this? Also ... this has nothing do with Liblime trying to trademark Koha in NZ.

Ask them.

If you think domain ownership and trademark have no bearing upon each other, I can't help you.

obelos is correct; one of the products supported by LibLime, LibLime Koha (LK for short), is periodically published to the shared GitHub link. The code in that repository is an older version of what LibLime's LK customers are running (4.2 versus 4.6 or 4.8). LK is, to the best of my knowledge, the extension of Harley, a Koha fork put out by PTFS several years ago. obelos: is the new version you're releasing next week 4.4, or something later?

There is also the close-source product, LibLime Enterprise Koha (LLEK), which I believe may have been rebranded as "LibLime Academic Koha". This software is a separate fork from LK, one started by LibLime before it's purchase by PTFS. The announcement can be viewed here: http://liswire.com/content/liblime-announces-liblime-enterpr...

So, PTFS/LibLime has both a non-open fork (LLEK) and a partially open fork (LK). As time passes, these forks diverge further and further from Koha (for example, Koha has since switched templating systems, which makes applying interface layer code from one to the other very difficult).

How about the "Koha Academic" product? Maybe that's the "non-open fork" the poster referred to.

What companies were offered to purchase koha.org - I never saw any such discussion on any open mailing list?

When you say get it in writing, you mean like this?

http://koha.1045719.n5.nabble.com/PTFS-Koha-Community-Suppor...

some more info on the backstory is on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibLime

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