Dear List Members,
Werner Heuser author of Linux on the Road ( A Guide for Laptops and
PDAs) has been charged with trademark issues by the owner of the
trademarks for Asterix and Obelix "Les Editions Albert Rene" (Paris).
The name of his website MobiliX.org is supposed to be
mistaken for Obelix.
The trademark Obelix was registered by the German lawyer
Guenter Freiherr v. Gravenreuth. The legal charge is up
to 250.000 USD or six months prison. The costs of the first instance
are app. 15.000 USD. Werner Heuser has decided not to withdraw
the name "MobiliX". He is supported by the German lawyers
Jaschinski, Biere und Brexl - JBB (http://www.jbb-berlin.de).
This case is another one in the recent series of trademark troubles
for Free Software projects (SAMBA, Kylix, Kilustrator,
SELFHTML, SuSE, ..). Therefore this case seems to be very important
not only because many of these projects have names ending on "iX".
The MobiliX.org (http://mobilix.org) site is dedicated to Mobile UniX
systems. Therefore its name is a combination
of the word "mobile" and the suffix "iX". It leads you to a lot of
useful hands-on information about installing and running Linux, BSD,
Solaris and other UniXes on laptops, PDAs, cell phones and other
mobile computer devices. It exists since five years and besides
the famous site "Linux on Laptops" (http://www.linux-laptop.net)
by Kenneth E. Harker it seems to be biggest resource on this topic.
Current news about the case are at
http://mobilix.org/mobilix_asterix.html
Werner Heuser
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