As you have heard, the KiCad development and bug tracker are moving from Launchpad to GitLab. However, we have been unable to secure the https://www.gitlab.com/kicad group name for the project. The name appears to already be taken. However, this is not a public group or user, so we don’t know who controls the name.
Does anyone here know who controls the “kicad” name at GitLab? In the interim, we’ve registered https://www.gitlab.com/kicad_pcb but it would be much better if we could use the shorter name.
We’re figuring out the little details to try to make this as seamless as possible. As soon as we know more, we’ll post the full plan here and on the developer list.
Interesting about the trademark.
The GitLab disclaimer is trying to duck responsibility onto the account holder.
Try registering “Oracle” and watch what happens
Hmm, thin legal ground there for GitLab. I think they are trying the “common carrier” approach, but courts generally take the view that web hosts are “publishers”, and responsible for content.
Gitlab seem to have been making several mis-steps recently, I’m not sure they are getting good counsel.
(Not to completely derail the thread, but since it is solved, meh. And also the usual I am not a lawyer/intellectual property expert, this is just my understanding of things).
Trademark law is a lot more complicated than just if you have one you can use the word and no one else can. Each trademark is limited to a specific type of good/service, and they can only enforce the trademark against you if you are either operating in that good/service field or someone could reasonably confuse your product with theirs (again, usually in the same good/service). If I wanted to create projects focused on fortune telling on GitLab, and registered it under the “oracle” domain there, I don’t reasonably see a way that would violate their trademarks (unless they have a trademark in the fortune telling services category, which I haven’t seen in my searches) and give them any cause. If I used that name for projects related to virtualization/SAAS, then they could reasonably have a cause to block my use of that name (but they would have to go outside GitLab to do that, see below).
The GitLab position is that they do not want to arbitrate trademark disputes, because it opens them up to even more liability and they are also not equipped to judge/decide those disputes (they can get nasty). By forcing the parties to work it out, the standard methods for handling trademark disputes can be used (negotiations, USPTO appeals, mediation, litigation, etc.), and then GitLab just executes the resulting actions as directed by the parties/court.
