[Osmf-talk] Treasurer's report for tomorrow's AGM

[Simon Poole]

Frederik has already given the numbers, just a few comments from my side:

  * for those registrations that go well, the costs are mainly fees.
    They can differ quite substantially from country to country (that is
    why we don't have registrations in certain countries that you would
    think we should), we have got reasonably good deals on the counsels
    costs, it simply starts getting expensive when we have to start
    arguing our case, not to mention the time it costs on our side.
  * for a number of countries you could DIY and save some money, but
    when things go wrong (and our marks are asking for trouble) you
    typically would still need a local lawyer, which then becomes
    difficult.
  * I wouldn't claim that there is a big grand plan, we are simply
    registering in the countries with larger OSM communities and those
    with longer term strategic importance, skipping those that we
    consider too expensive at this point in time. From a budgeting point
    of view  we've typically based our projections on quotes that we've
    received in the past and have added some contingency funds for
    registrations that are still in process.
  * all in all I would like to point out, that while relatively speaking
    we are spending a lot, in absolute numbers it is absolutely minimal
    and in total is far less that just one serious trademark fight would
    cost.

As to why we are doing this: unluckily we have a recent, good example at
hand: you may have noticed that "Mappy Hour" has fallen in to disuse by
our US friends. This is because a corresponding trademark was registered
by a third party and them objecting against the continued use for OSM
related events. We want to minimize the risk something similar happening
to us as far as possible, and naturally have some clout to stop misuse
of the marks by third parties.

As I pointed out 2-3 weeks back on the talk list, everybody in the
community could make our life easier and help by not using plays on and
remixes of our marks and in the end save us all time and money.

Simon


Am 09.12.2016 um 23:57 schrieb Christoph Hormann:
> On Friday 09 December 2016, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>> You speak as if the data was somehow there in our records, just not
>> made public. The reality is that the data isn't even in our records -
>> all invoices pertaining to trademark registrations land in the same
>> accounting category and without going back and looking at the
>> individual invoices we can't even tell how much is paid for fees and
>> how much for lawyers. I'll try and figure it out for you.
> Oh - if this is just for me then please don't.
>
> Seriously, i don't really care much about past money spent, my main 
> motivation to bring this up here is future decisions.  So if (and only 
> if) others also consider this useful and important it might be a good 
> idea to document this in more detail in the future.
>

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