You can help the defenders.

For years, Red Hat Legal has given free services to the Fedora Project such as counsel on licensing and IP issues like patents and trademarks. Now they’re asking for help from us, the Fedora community.  Here’s a brief snippet of what I wrote to the advisory-board list this morning:

Red Hat Legal provides numerous services as counsel to the Fedora community, including defending Fedora trademarks against possible encroachment. Occasionally, people who have no connection to our community attempt to use the Fedora trademark to signify business efforts that have no connection to the Fedora Project, our distribution, or the Fedora community. Red Hat Legal is currently working on just such a defense. They’ve asked me to pass on a request for assistance in gathering physical evidence of our use of the Fedora logo worldwide prior to January 30, 2007.

Please go read the full announcement to see what you can do to help. For example, there’s a specific issue of Linux Magazine from March 2006 that would be very helpful to have, or other magazines prior to January 30, 2007 that show our current Fedora logo in association with the Fedora Project or distribution. But there are other goods that would be helpful too. The announcement has a list of criteria, what Red Hat Legal specifically needs from you, and the addresses where you can send it.

UPDATE: Check out this updated information about how you can help even more easily. It turns out that evidence of our using the word “Fedora” in conjunction with the distribution at any time earlier than January 30, 2007 is useful, whether our current logo (which we started using in late 2005/early 2006) appears there or not.