When open source developers call us asking to confirm that they can use the trademark or name of an open source project for their newly forked project, they do not get the black and white answer “Yes” that they desire but rather the grey area lawyer response – “It depends on what you propose to use, how you propose to use it, the license, and whether there is a naming or trademark policy.” My partner, Gail Hashimoto and I recently authored a client alert discussing in detail the issues and how to work around them [link}
