In the US if you do not defend your trademark you loose it. It's a simple matter of RH defending their trademark so they won't loose it..it's not RH being a prick..it's them doing what the law requires them to do. Centos ran into this as well. RH took a lot of heat for them doing something similar to Centos but it's just how US trademark law works..:) I've had a great dialog with the author of this story..:)

First point: I'd recommend that people go check the link for themselves...just look at the pictures and ignore the text for a few seconds. RH aren't claiming to own the infinity symbol as stated; but the similarity between the logos is undeniable. Look at orientation, colour, alternation of colour, etc. Also, speaking from experience the representation of Redhat's logo on this page isn't very representative, and is (deliberately?) poorly chosen to maximise apparent differences in hue between logos.

If someone had taken the PS2's control symbols (square, triangle, circle, & cross) five years ago, subtly changed the coloring, and used the result as a brand for, say, a new game publisher exclusive to the XBox platform, how do you think Sony would have reacted?

Second point: Redhat aren't claiming the violation of any commercial logo; they're protecting the identity of the FREE, OPEN, NON-PROFIT FEDORA project. Fedora may be upstream of Redhat, and there is certainly a great deal of cooperation between the organisations; but Fedora also forms the basis of an increasing number of other distros, potentially commercial competitors to RH. Fedora development etc is independent of Redhat.


In a perfectly competitive market, product differentiation & brand is everything. Redhat are doing the right thing to protect a nonprofit organisation, albeit via (enlightened) self-interest.