Linux lusers will under­stand the post title to be a badly bro­ken recur­sive acronym on the usual theme. And only they will get that sen­tence. But while read­ing a law report Geeklawyer hap­pened across the case of Plan­e­tary Motion, Inc. v. Tech­splo­sion, Inc. [URL fixed] which has an inter­est­ing last paragraph:

“Soft­ware is com­monly dis­trib­uted with­out charge under a GNU Gen­eral Pub­lic License. The suf­fi­ciency of use should be deter­mined accord­ing to the cus­tom­ary prac­tices of a par­tic­u­lar industry.…That the Soft­ware had been dis­trib­uted pur­suant to a GNU Gen­eral Pub­lic License does not defeat trade­mark own­er­ship, nor does this in any way com­pel a find­ing that Dar­rah aban­doned his rights in trade­mark. Appel­lants mis­con­strue the func­tion of a GNU Gen­eral Pub­lic License. Soft­ware dis­trib­uted pur­suant to such a license is not nec­es­sar­ily ceded to the pub­lic domain and the licen­sor pur­ports to retain own­er­ship rights, which may or may not include rights to a mark.…”

This would be the result expected by GNU licensees and one which most lawyers would pre­dict but which one occa­sion­ally hears detrac­tors utter. In the US juris­dic­tion Plan­e­tary Motion would seem to torch any argu­ment along those lines. If the case came to the UK Geeklawyer would be pretty con­fi­dent that any com­pe­tent and com­pe­tent court would hold the same. Apolo­gies for post­ing about the law again.