[OSM-talk] Recent edits in the wiki / Trademark issue

[Ilya Zverev]

Hi. Since no one has explained, I'd quote a part from OSMF Board 
Meeting Minutes:

> OSMF received C+D letter from someone who trademarked the word 
> “Geocode(TM)” and asks us to remove all references to this from our web 
> site where it is connected in some way with Google services. Simon is 
> in contact with a lawyer about this. We might actually remove the few 
> occurrences because they are not essential to us.

So, you can still use "geocode" as a word. But you cannot, as it seems, 
use it in relation with Google services. That is, no "geocode using 
google" and such. That's why some links to Google Maps were removed. I 
don't know about Nominatim, especially MapQuest's Nominatim, but to be 
on a safe side, better use "search". And if you don't mention any 
services, you can use that word freely, as in "now having parsed 
coordinates, do the reverse geocoding to aquire their human-readable 
locations". After all, the wikipedia page for "Geocoding" doesn't 
mention any trademarks (although it has Google Maps as its first 
reference).

IZ