MobiliX.org: severe charge with trademark issues by "Asterix and Obelix"

[Werner Heuser]

Dear List Member,

Werner Heuser author of Linux on the Road ( A Guide for Laptops and 
PDAs) has been charged with trademark issues by the owner of the 
trademarks for Asterix and Obelix "Les Editions Albert Rene" (Paris). 
The name of his website MobiliX.org is supposed to be 
mistaken for Obelix.

The trademark Obelix was registered by the German lawyer 
Guenter Freiherr v. Gravenreuth. The legal charge is up 
to 250.000 USD or six months prison. The costs of the first instance 
are app. 15.000 USD. Werner Heuser has decided not to withdraw 
the name "MobiliX". He is supported by the German lawyers 
Jaschinski, Biere und Brexl - JBB (http://www.jbb-berlin.de).

This case is another one in the recent series of trademark troubles 
for Free Software projects (SAMBA, Kylix, Kilustrator, 
SELFHTML, SuSE, ..). Therefore this case seems to be very important 
not only because many of these projects have names ending on "iX".

The MobiliX.org (http://mobilix.org) site is dedicated to Mobile UniX 
systems. Therefore its name is a combination 
of the word "mobile" and the suffix "iX". It leads you to a lot of 
useful hands-on information about installing and running Linux, BSD, 
Solaris and other UniXes on laptops, PDAs, cell phones and other 
mobile computer devices. It exists since five years and besides 
the famous site "Linux on Laptops" (http://www.linux-laptop.net) 
by Kenneth E. Harker it seems to be biggest resource on this topic.

Current news about the case are at 
http://mobilix.org/mobilix_asterix.html


Werner Heuser

-- 
|=| Werner Heuser = Keplerstr. 11A = D-10589 Berlin = Germany
|=| <wehe_AT_mobilix.org>      T. 0049 - (0)30 - 349 53 86
|=| http://MobiliX.org         How to Use UniX on Mobile Computers
|=| http://Xtops.DE            Laptops+PDAs pre-installed with UniX
|*| This is no time for phony rhetoric -- Lou Reed