If we are strictly talking about legal definitions, and no longer discussing anything to do with the forum, you may be incorrect there. Assuming we are talking about Common Law jurisdiction, with Crypto Currencies being a thing that could not be precidented based on previous cases, a judge would try to draw connections to somewhat similar cases, in other words Software name and branding cases.
If a software comes out under a MIT/X11 License called "Duck" obviously they cannot patent or trademark the word "Duck" they can trademark logos, but that is unimportant for this example. Under the MIT/X11 license as you posted, people are free to make whatever modifications they wish. However! If someone decides to make another competing software that performs the same task as "Duck" and then they name it "Duck" the creators of the original "Duck" could indeed sue. If they decided to name it "Duck2.0" they could also sue, claiming that the name infringes on their software and confuses brand confusion. Now if they decide to name it "Goose" techincally if the software is close enough, "Duck" may still have a case against it, however that would depend on other circumstances and how good one's lawyers are.
Bitcoin is a SHA based Crypto Currency created by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. If a coin has any other description other than that, it is not Bitcoin. It can be a Bitcoin derivative, but you could not claim under any jurisdiction, that another coin is also Bitcoin. The MIT/X11 License gives people the rights to edit the Bitcoin source and create their own coins under other names, but should someone make Bitcoin2.0, Satoshi could techincally sue them over it, again not that he would.
None of that applies to the forum in anyway, but if Satoshi decided to indentify themself or themselves, while they would not have legal authority over Litecoin, Namecoin, etc etc, they would have legal authority over anyone who tried to misrepresent themselves as Bitcoin, in a way that infringes on his/her/their intellectual property. Satoshi designed Bitcoin for everyone, but everyone did not create Bitcoin.
While I previously gave you the benefit of the doubt when catching you in multiple misstatements and untruths in this thread, it's now obvious you have no idea what you're talking about. Your armchair legal analysis would be considered legal malpractice if you made these statements up for a client.
A few things first:
1. There is established case law on open-source that is applicable to the situation at hand, notwithstanding your claims otherwise.
2. You confuse copyright law with trademark law when asserting your branding claims, but they are two distinct bodies of law and the latter is inapplicable here.
I'de wager that you have never heard of the seminal Open-source case in the biggest common law jurisdiction in the world entitled
Jacobsen v. Katzer, 535 F.3d 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2008)
available online at http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/images/stories/opinions-orders/08-1001.pdf.
I'll briefly explain it to you since you obviously have never read this case, as evidenced by your Matlock-esque post.
This was an appeal to the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., from a Federal District court concerning the extent of rights held by a licensor and licensee of software distributed under an open-source license; here, the Artistic License but the analysis is the same.
Here are some pertinent quotes from the case:
We consider here the ability of a copyright holder to dedicate certain work to free
public use and yet enforce an "open source" copyright license to control the future
distribution and modification of that work. (page 1)
Public licenses, often referred to as Open Source licenses, are used by artists,
authors, educators, software developers, and scientists who wish to create collaborative
projects and to dedicate certain works to the public. (page 6)
Open source licensing has become a widely used method of creative collaboration
that serves to advance the arts and sciences in a manner and at a pace that few could
have imagined just a few decades ago. For example, the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology ("MIT") uses a Creative Commons public license for an OpenCourseWare
project that licenses all 1800 MIT courses. Other public licenses support the GNU/Linux
operating system, the Perl programming language, the Apache web server programs, the
Firefox web browser, and a collaborative web-based encyclopedia called
Wikipedia. (pages 6-7) (emphasis added).
Generally, a "copyright owner who grants a nonexclusive license to use his copyrighted material waives
his right to sue the licensee for copyright infringement" and can sue only for breach of
contract. Sun Microsystems, Inc., v. Microsoft Corp., 188 F.3d 1115, 1121 (9th Cir. 1999);
Graham v. James, 144 F.3d 229, 236 (2d Cir. 1998). If, however, a license is limited in
scope and the licensee acts outside the scope, the licensor can bring an action for copyright infringement.
See S.O.S., Inc. v. Payday, Inc., 886 F.2d 1081, 1087 (9th Cir.1989); Nimmer on Copyright, ' 1015[A] (1999). (pages 9-10) (emphasis added).
The Appeals court ended up holding that violations of open-source and public licenses are enforceable through copyright infringement and that the appellee was infringing the appellant's open-source copyright by not following the terms of the open-source license (i.e., failing to include the copyright notice, not following terms re attribution, not noting changed files, etc...) and remanded the case back to the District court where it was later dismissed as a result of an out of court settlement between the parties.
Besides demonstrating that you don't know what you're taking about, this case when applied to our facts demonstrates that the copyright owner who grants a nonexclusive license to use his open-source copyrighted material waives his right to sue the licensee for copyright infringement if the licensee does not act outside the scope of the license.
See Jacobsen, pgs 9-10. Here, since Satoshi's MIT/X11 license contains no conditions limiting or restricting the use of the name Bitcoin (and the name Bitcoin is not trademarked), a licensee is not infringing upon Satoshi's copyright by including the name Bitcoin if none of the express conditions in the MIT/X11 License are violated.
I'm not trying to be rude but please reconcile this with your last post before you make up anymore nonsense.
Accordingly, I stand by my statement that this forum perpetuates the legal falsehood that there is an
official Bitcoin in the legal sense.
