From: Werner Heuser Werner.Heuser@web.de Subject: Trademark Trouble: MobiliX wins Against Obelix Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 16:28:27 CST Reply-To: Werner Heuser wehe@mobilix.org
In the hearing from June 12th the court has rejected the arguments of "L�s Editions Albert Ren�". 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 "L�s Editions Albert Ren�", 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 Some other projects have even silently withdrawn there names, because the financial risk of loosing a trademark case is high.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).