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Pam is a Board Member of the Open Source Initiative and the principal of Chestek Legal in Raleigh, North Carolina. She works with creative communities, giving practical legal advice on branding, marketing, and protecting and sharing content. Pam has authored several scholarly articles, has a legal blog at Property, Intangible, and was formerly an adjunct professor at Western New England College School of Law.
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Please, please, please tell me you did something special for the person who re-wrote the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air lyrics --
Nice article Richard, although I suspect you know I disagree with your view on the importance of trademarks to open source communities! Your lynx/links and Konqueror/Conkeror examples have analogs in the commercial world, it's simply a matter of the parties' tolerance of what might be considered similar marks and consumers indeed learn to adjust. (In fact, there are two different projects using "Fedora," but I doubt you would say that Fedora is not a trademark for this reason.) It is quite common when no one has the time, energy or money to complain. But the coexistence of similar names doesn't mean that they don't function as trademarks.