In the hearing from June 12th the court has rejected the arguments of "Lés Editions Albert René". The court says the words "MobiliX" and "Obelix" can hardly be mixed up with each other. Also the work of MobiliX is dedicated to another audience. This is a great success for the Free Software Community.
MobiliX is a very wellknown site dedicated to Linux and BSD on mobile devices (like laptops, PDAs, cell phones and more). In November 2001 Werner Heuser, owner of the Open Source project MobiliX - UniX on Mobile Computers (http://mobilix.org) was charged by "Lés Editions Albert René", which is owner of the trademark "Obelix". In their opinion the names Obelix and MobiliX are very similar. The charge aimed on a deletion of the trademark "MobiliX" and a compensation fee.
The charge has been discussed in many newsgroups and mailing lists. It seems to be a very important case for the Free Software Community, because there are many projects, which names are also ending on "iX". Some other projects have even silently withdrawn there names, because the financial risk of loosing a trademark case is high.
The documentation of the case is available online (http://mobilix.org/de/mobilix_asterix.html). It includes the letters from MobiliX lawerys Jaschinski Biere Brexl - JBB (http://www.jbb.de).
On Thu, 2002-06-13 at 11:51, Werner Heuser wrote:
In the hearing from June 12th the court has rejected the arguments of "Lés Editions Albert René". The court says the words "MobiliX" and "Obelix" can hardly be mixed up with each other. Also the work of MobiliX is dedicated to another audience. This is a great success for the Free Software Community.
Hello Werner,
I once supplied you with a Portuguese company whose name ended in ix. I hope that may have also been usefull.
Do LEAR publicly think about continuing the fight any further (I hope not!)?
Cheers,