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roncesvallestoday at 11:30 AM2 repliesview on HN

Yeah it's pretty clear that he's well-intentioned. There are plenty of ports of open source projects literally named "port of <trademarked name>" and generally the original authors don't mind. what even is the point of open source if you can't do that?

If I fork a repo on GitHub and the name of the project is trademarked, have I committed trademark violation?

In this case he just went a little too far by cloning the whole website. Even then tbh I still take his side because it's in the spirit of the Wild West Internet culture to have done something like this.


Replies

mg794613today at 1:56 PM

Wow, have you seen his resumé?

There is no language or culture barrier here. This guy knows exactly what he's doing.

We'll wait while you check it out :D

kube-systemtoday at 2:42 PM

> If I fork a repo on GitHub and the name of the project is trademarked, have I committed trademark violation?

If you purport that you are that project, then yes.

Trademark is a consumer protection law that protects people from misrepresentation -- when you buy a Coca Cola you know it is the Coca Cola.

If there is any confusion that [x] software port is from the same original author of [x], it is trademark infringement.

> what even is the point of open source if you can't do that?

Open source is about sharing the code itself -- it is not about misrepresenting who wrote it. There is a very clear line between the two.