Google forges Open Usage Commons to manage open-source project trademarks, lobs hot-potato Istio at it

Google has set up an organization dubbed the Open Usage Commons to manage three open-source projects' trademarks – and provide developers advice on handling and using brands. The ads'n'search giant said today: "One of the places we’ve historically seen projects stumble is in managing their trademarks – their project's name and …

[Pascal Monett]

“We want to take on this problem of trademark policy. We think it’s important.”

Translation : we think there's money in them 'thar hills, and we're going to make all of it.

This is Google. They're not doing this to protect other projects' trademarks, they're doing it to protect their territory.

What will be interesting will be to see how Google will react when someone else uses their framework to bash them over the head with it.

Looking forward to that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: “We want to take on this problem of trademark policy. We think it’s important.”

I'm cynical about a lot of Google's actions but not this one.

As the article points out they already have their own framework in place to protect their own trademarks. I suspect that most applications you've heard of are also trademarked. They are offering this for smaller, independent developers.

Linux already has something similar for Linux developers - the Linux Mark Institute.