Trademark
Drupal trademark policy: update after 11 months
The Drupal trademark policy was launched officially about 11 months ago. As explained in my blog post on the Drupal trademark policy, the purpose of the policy is to create a level playing field for all. It allows everyone to use the trademark without administrative hassle, while at the same time keeping some control and oversight to avoid dilution and misuse. For example, we all know the scarcity of cool domain names, and how frustrating it can be for a local Drupal user group to find that their domain name has already been taken by a commercial entity. The trademark policy seeks to resolve this problem.
Now one year later, there have been some interesting results from the trademark policy. So far, I have received 89 serious trademark queries. Twenty-three of these resulted in a license being granted because the requested use was intended completely to foster Drupal software. For example, there was a request for the name Drupal to be used in the title of a Drupal camp. There were other requests for the name to be include in non-commercial modules. These are all acceptable and good uses of the trademark.
In 32 other trademark usage requests, a formal license contract was required. Among the formal licenses, so far only four contracts have actually resulted in the payment of the administrative license fee. Although the fee is quite reasonable (i.e., 600 euros for clearly commercial use; 300 euros for mixed use), many correspondents ultimately changed their plan in order to avoid the administrative fee. In quite a few other cases where a formal contract was imposed but the intended use was clearly not commercial, no administrative fee was requested. These were typically requests from local Drupal groups.
Finally, there were several trademark usage requests that were rejected simply because they would endanger the level playing field due to their monopolizing nature. Examples of this include domain names like drupalhosting.xyz or drupalthemes.xyz.
I hope everyone can see that the trademark policy is not a money printing machine for me. In fact, it's the opposite. I have paid personally for the creation of the policy and the cost of responding to trademark usage requests. The balance between costs and income is quite skewed out of my favor, although the amount of payments seems to be increasing.
Nevertheless, I am happy with the results so far. I've learned a great deal in the process, and, despite a few unsupportive comments from some, the reactions I have received overall have been positive. In fact, the most common reaction is that, although they understand why they need to pay the administrative fee and why they cannot use a monopolizing domain name, they cannot understand why numerous websites seem to get away with trademark infringements.
This reaction is understandable, of course. Remember, though, that the trademark policy is still quite new. I trust that most members of the Drupal community will comply voluntarily with the policy. So far there hasn't been a need to be a lot more vigorous in ensuring compliance with the trademark policy. There have only been a few difficult people or organizations that have attempted to infringe on the policy, requiring me to become more stern at times.
As expected when we first announced this policy, there were some comments on the actual content of the policy. My lawyers are now in the process of preparing a slightly updated version of the policy. So if you have any suggestions on improvements, please share them with us. For now, though, I'm quite pleased at the results of our first 11 months of having a trademark policy.
European Drupal trademark
This week, after almost a year of waiting, the European Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs), or OHIM, has finally approved my application for a community trademark. This means the "Drupal" word mark is now protected in all Member States of the European Union.
Previously, the Drupal name was only protected in Benelux and the United States, so this extra level of protection is a big and important step.
To help protect the Drupal name, I published the Drupal trademark policy on drupal.com in August 2009. It was created to provide guidance to people interested in using the Drupal trademark, and aims to create a level playing field for everyone in the community. Since announcing the trademark policy, we received dozens of applications. With the assistance of my attorney, we have been progressing them in batches of 20-40 at a time. We still have a backlog so stay tuned if you haven't heard back yet.
Having the Drupal name protected against abuses in both the US and the European Union is a big step forward for the project. It means that we have the necessary recognition, authority, and tools to uphold the integrity of our project. Drupal continues to grow up!
Drupal trademark policy officially available
Just a short time ago, I announced the refresh of Drupal.com. As I announced in my post, Drupal.com has a couple of purposes: one of its key purposes is serving as the current home of the official Drupal trademark policy. As of today, version 1.0 is available and published at http://drupal.com/trademark.
I invite you to read the Drupal Trademark Policy in detail. It's full of illustrative examples, and I hope that we've made it as community-friendly as possible. We can't cover every possible scenario, but I believe it addresses most situations that are likely to occur within our community. It may -- and certainly will -- change over time as we keep in sync with the changing needs of our community and, if necessary, to account for unforeseen situations. That is important to keep in mind.
I've owned the Drupal trademark for a long time. The lack of a Drupal trademark policy doesn't mean the trademark was unprotected -- it was protected by trademark law. The lack of a Drupal trademark policy meant that it was unclear what was allowed and what wasn't allowed, and frankly, that you were bound by trademark law. By creating a trademark policy and a licensing procedure, we've provided us options we did not have before.
The goal of our new policy is to provide guidance and clarity on how the Drupal trademark is allowed to be used. The only community model that really works is one where there is a fair-level playing ground for all people and organizations. Ultimately, that is what this policy seeks to accomplish.
The entire process of developing the policy was a community effort, with help from a variety of legal experts. We worked on the policy over the course of almost two years. A draft version of the policy was posted at http://groups.drupal.org/node/19068, and through the community feedback that developed there, we ironed out many of the wrinkles of my original draft. Larry Garfield, the Drupal Association's current legal representative has provided feedback, and both my own attorney (DLA Piper) and additional attorneys from the Software Freedom Law Center and the Drupal Association were part of the policy's development. To help validate our work, we reviewed other similar policies from sister projects to make sure that we were in-line with the current legal trends in open-source development.
As the owner of the trademark, protection of the trademark falls to me, and is managed by me with the assistance of my attorney, the Drupal Association, and potentially even local Drupal Associations. I personally bear substantial personal costs as part of sustaining the trademark in all its various geographic jurisdictions. To help offset the costs of managing the trademark, the trademark licenses, and to actively pursue those who infringe or inappropriately seek to use our brand, I will sell some advertising space on drupal.com and may also charge a small licensing fee to those that do not qualify for an automatic trademark license (section 1A) and that need to follow the license grant procedure (section 1B). Now the policy is published, I plan to work out the financial details in the next months so stay tuned for an update on that.
Most of you who use Drupal, commercially or otherwise, need not worry about how the new policy may impact you, though I certainly encourage you to study it and to apply for a license if required. For instance, in many cases, you are allowed to use the name 'Drupal' in domain names. Conversely, there are some Drupal domain names in particular that the policy seeks to protect for the good of the community and to create a fair-level playing ground. The introduction of the official policy is only intended to help ensure that the effort of hard-working Drupal contributors is not misappropriated. I think it will make us even stronger, as a community!
Drupal.com to get a facelift
As explained in my DrupalCon DC keynote presentation, drupal.com has been getting way too much organic traffic (1,000 unique visits on a good day) to not look great and show off all the cool things that have been happening within the Drupal community. I have had a pretty embarrassing place holder on this personal site for years that is just the Druplicon (see screenshot below).
The old Drupal.com design that we have had for years.
I asked my friends at Development Seed to create some mockups for a new drupal.com (see screenshot below). I really like the professional tone that such a site could create for many people who are experiencing Drupal for the first time. The header part will come with rotating images and captions, and other Javascript goodness so don't blind stare at the copy on the screenshot.
The new Drupal.com design that we plan to launch shortly.
It is just a tiny little website but for now it shows how hot the Drupal project is and I'm looking forward to some ad revenue to help cover my Drupal trademark expenses. With the help of Development Seed, I plan to get this up and running in the next couple of weeks. I still have to figure out how to best run the advertising part -- suggestions welcome. At some point, I might turn drupal.com into something a little more useful, but for the time being, I think this marks a tremendous improvement! I'm confident that the new design will help promote the project.
Drupal trademark policy forthcoming
As the holder of the Drupal trademark, I've recently decided to modify the footer on drupal.org to state the fact clearly by including the wording "Drupal is a Registered Trademark of Dries Buytaert"; this is considered a common trademark practice and has been advised to me by my lawyers to clear any potential confusion.
Trademarks are important because they help prevent confusion by distinguishing one company's, community's or person's work from the products and services of another company, community or person. A trademark essentially serves as a badge of origin and is not to be confused with copyright, ownership or licenses.
Together with the Drupal Association I'm working on a permissive formal trademark policy modeled after Ubuntu's trademark policy. I'm sure you'll find it reasonable. As soon the trademark policy is available, we'll link to it from the footer on drupal.org.
Rest assured that this change is intended only to prevent the 'Drupal' name from being used out of context by overly aggressive entities. Most of you who use Drupal, commercially or otherwise, need not worry. This change will only help ensure that the effort of all the hard working Drupal contributors isn't misappropriated.
Until then, stay tuned, and enjoy using Drupal!
