The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Deeplinks Blog reports that the Wikimedia Foundation has demanded that Wikipedia Art, a site commenting on art and Wikipedia, cease using the domain name “wikipediaart.org” on the grounds that the domain name violates the Wikimedia Foundation’s trademarks.
Last February, a pair of artists, working with several collaborators, created a Wikipedia article and invited the general public to add to it, following Wikipedia’s standards of credibility and verifiability. The work was intended to comment on the nature of art and Wikipedia. But Wikipedia editors did not take kindly to the project, and it was shut down within fifteen hours for being insufficiently “encyclopaedic.”
Fast forward a couple of months. The artists, Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern, have created a noncommercial website that documents the project, called Wikipedia Art. The domain name for the project: wikipediaart.org.
Yep, they used the term “wikipedia” in their domain name. “Wikipedia” is a trademark owned by the Wikimedia Foundation. And now the Foundation has demanded that the artists give up the domain name peaceably or it will attempt to take it by (legal) force.
I fail to see any trademark problems here. Trademark law exists to avoid confusion among customers with regard to brands, logos, and names. Based on the EFF’s article, it appears that all this site was doing was using the name to refer to the site itself, not host a faux Wikipedia or deceive Wikipedians into going to Wikipedia Art instead. The site itself even has a disclaimer at the top of the page denying any involvement with Wikipedia. I for one am grateful that the EFF has not overlooked their principles on free speech just because the site in question just happens to be Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation should retract their accusations and apologize immediately (or at the very least provide an explanation for this action).