Burning Man trademark fracas

8Ball — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 16:46:00 -0800

By now most of the community has probably heard about the John Law vs BM trademark lawsuit. It’s been on Laughing Squid on BoingBoing and even on CNET

The summary of what I’ve read is that John Law wants to the Burning Man trademarks to go Public Domain, while the BM organization wants to retain control because, according to Maid Marrian’s response to the suit, they are concerned about commercialization.

I don’t know a ton about copyright law, except that it’s a tangled ugly mess, and so far I haven’t heard anyone talk about an option that would involve Creative Commons licensing. But to me, this seems like a prefect application of the “Some rights reserved” approach. CC offers flexible licenses that would, for example, allow a Burning Man fan to use the Burning Man trademark in an art piece that goes on public display, but would not allow Mattel to launch Burner Barbie© next x-mas. There are a variety of legal attributions, detailed on the CC site, and I hope when this matter goes to arbitration the parties involved think about what’s right for the community, and keep that in the forefront, regardless of how much they want the other party to eat shit and die.

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Burning Man trademark fracas