Getting a trademark for something will not shield you from abusive behavior from big companies, and the GNOME Foundation is learning this the hard way. The company behind Groupon is trying to steal the GNOME trademark for a tablet they are developing.

Update [November 11, 2014, later]: Groupon has abandoned the Gnome name for its tablet software and it looks like all the problems have been solved.

News about Groupon making a tablet called Gnome has been circulating for some months now, but it hasn’t been taken all that seriously. In fact, very little was known about the tablet itself and there was no reason to think that it would have any kind of success. Well, the tablet is a flop (for merchants and businesses), as you would expect, but Groupon is now looking to steal the GNOME trademark from the GNOME Foundation.

As you can imagine, the GNOME trademark has been in effect for many years, since 2006, but owning it is not enough, especially if your trademark is attacked by a huge company who really wants it. The GNOME Foundation is non-profit and it doesn't have the required funds to protect itself against big business interests that are willing to throw a lot of money on lawyers and trials.

What is being done to protect GNOME and what you can do about it

The GNOME Foundation members saw that Groupon wanted to make a product called Gnome and did what any trademark holder does. They informed Groupon they had the trademark and that they needed to rename it. Instead of renaming it, Groupon, which is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, has filed for its own trademarks, and basically, started a legal war.

"The GNOME community was shocked that Groupon would use our mark for a product so closely related to the GNOME desktop and technology. It was almost inconceivable to us that Groupon, with over $2.5 billion [€2 billion] in annual revenue, a full legal team and a huge engineering staff would not have heard of the GNOME project, found our trademark registration using a casual search, or even found our website, but we nevertheless got in touch with them and asked them to pick another name. Not only did Groupon refuse, but it has now filed even more trademark applications."

"To use the GNOME name for a proprietary software product that is antithetical to the fundamental ideas of the GNOME community, the free software community and the GNU project is outrageous. Please help us fight this huge company as they try to trade on our goodwill and hard earned reputation," is noted on the gnome.org official website.

Groupon filed until now 28 trademark applications and the GNOME Foundation is fighting 10 of them, but they need the money to do it. More precisely, The Foundation will need $80,000 (€65,000) until December 3, 2014. The Linux community is called upon to contribute or at least to make others aware Groupon's nefarious practices. Even if you can't contribute financially, you can put pressure on Groupon via social media, for example.

The GNOME Foundation is responsible for the development of GNOME, one of the best known desktop environments on the Linux platform.