The Kodi team, operating under the XBMC Foundation, is taking a stand against ‘trademark trolls’ who abuse the Kodi name for personal profit. They accuse the Canadian trademark owner of actively blackmailing hardware vendors and removing content from Amazon. If needed, the foundation says that it may have to take legal action to keep its software freely accessible.
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More and more people are starting to use Kodi-powered set-top boxes to stream video content to their TVs.
While Kodi itself is a neutral platform, unauthorized add-ons give it a bad name. This is one of the reasons why the Kodi team is actively going after vendors who sell “fully loaded” pirate boxes and YouTubers who misuse their name to promote copyright infringement.
However, these “pirates” are not the only intellectual property problem the team is facing; trademark trolls are a serious threat as well.
When XBMC changed its name to Kodi, they noticed that several parties swiftly registered the Kodi trademark around the world, presumably to make money off it. This came as a total surprise to the foundation, which never faced any trademark issues before, and it continues to cause problems today.
The Kodi team has since convinced some of these “trolls” to hand over the trademarks, but not all are willing to give in. This is causing problems, particularly in Canada, where the local trademark owner is actively blackmailing hardware vendors and removing content from Amazon, the Kodi team says.
The Canadian trademark is owned by Geoff Gavora, who is no stranger to the XBMC Foundation. Before the trouble started, Gavora had already sent several emails to the Kodi team, expressing how important the software was to his sales. After the trademark registration, however, the friendly tone changed.
“We had hoped, given the positive nature of his past emails, that perhaps he was doing this for the benefit of the Foundation. We learned, unfortunately, that this was not the case,” XBMC Foundation President Nathan Betzen notes.
“Instead, companies like Mygica and our sponsor Minix have been delisted by Gavora on Amazon, so that only Gavora’s hardware can be sold, unless those companies pay him a fee to stay on the store,” he adds.
Gavora is actively using his trademark to stop the sales of other Kodi based devices in Canada, the XBMC Foundation warns. This means that people who buy a Kodi product in the local Amazon store may end up filling the pocket of the local trademark owner.
“Now, if you do a search for Kodi on Amazon.ca, there’s a very real chance that every box you see is giving Gavora money to advertise that they can run what should be the entirely free and open Kodi. Gavora and his company are behaving in true trademark troll fashion,” Betzen writes.
There are several reasons why the Kodi team is making this problem public now. For one, they want the public to be aware of the situation. At some point, trademark trolls may even try to stop Kodi from distributing the software through their own site, they warn.
However, the foundation is not going to let this happen without a fight. They are ready to deal with the problem head on. Trademark trolls should not be allowed to exploit the Kodi name for financial profit.
“We want to let the trolls know that we have caught on to this game and will not accept it. We are actively taking the necessary steps to ensure that the Kodi trademark trolls are dealt with appropriately. There is no value proposition in trolling the Kodi name,’ Betzen writes.
If this means that the foundation has to go to court, they are prepared to do so, hoping that the community will have their back.
“While our goal has always been to avoid going to the court to ensure Kodi remains free in countries where trolls are attempting to get rich off of the Kodi name, we will not back down from protecting the free, open source nature of our software.
“If that time comes for legal action, we hope to have the community’s support,” Betzen concludes.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
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