Open Letter about Mozilla merchandise
Gervase Markham
merchandise. It's being posted rather than emailed in the spirit of
openness, and to ensure everyone who needs to read it can see a copy.
As I don't have a blog, I'm putting it here - feel free to blog it so
the word gets spread.
Gerv
Dear Mozilla supporter,
We note that you are selling Mozilla-branded merchandise in your web
shop/fashion house/bazaar stall (delete as appropriate.) While we are
pleased that you want to support Mozilla in this way, the Mozilla
Foundation enforces its trademarks and requires permission to sell
merchandise that includes our artwork or name.
The Mozilla project uses Mozilla, Firefox, the fox-on-the-globe and
other names and logos to brand its products and goods. We like to think
that it's a mark of quality. (That's not to say that what you're selling
is necessarily poor quality; we make no claims either way.) We'd like to
be certain that what's being sold with our logos on is the good stuff.
And (let's be honest here) it's only fair that we get a cut, to
contribute towards keeping the Foundation going.
So we'd ask you, please, to stop selling Mozilla-branded merchandise and
get in touch with lice...@mozilla.org to discuss how to proceed. We'll
talk business plans, quality guarantees, percentages and so on. We're
really open to coming to a fair arrangement.
The Mozilla store (http://store.mozilla.org) is our chosen vendor for
the US, Canada and Mexico. OK, there's not much stuff there now, but we
hope to have more soon. So we're unlikely to allow general Mozilla
merchandise aimed at the general public to be offered by anyone else in
those territories.
However, people in other countries, get in touch as outlined above and
we'll see if we can work something out. You want to support us, and we
want to be supported - so it shouldn't be too hard :-)
Gerv
P.S. Our lawyers asked us to specify that the Mozilla Foundation
reserves the right to take legal action to stop infringements of our
trademarks.