The online discount portal Groupon has come to a decision to drop off its trademark applications for its tablet Gnome. The company had released the tablet in May, with the tablet designed specifically to make it easier for retailers to deal with customers wishing to use Groupon’s discount deals. They had registered the trademark of the Gnome Foundation in 2006. It is used for a large number of open-source operating systems. It is used by default for operating systems like Debian, Fedora, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Groupon and Gnome Foundation had a deal that Groupon, who is into online discounts, will drop off all 28 of the pending trademark applications. Groupon and Gnome Foundation also sent out a joint statement to the press stating that they both are now working together, in anticipation of finding a solution which is mutually acceptable and of convenience to both partiers. The statement was published on a blog of the Gnome Foundation.
The two parties had been in conversation for over months now. The Gnome foundation said it had taken “a tremendous amount of time and effort to deal with this issue,” in the blogpost. Despite ongoing conversations between the two parties, the foundation had steeled itself for a fight, raising more than a quarter of the US$80,000 it estimated it needed to cover the initial legal fees to challenge Groupon. Some industry experts have stated that Groupon could pay a licensing or usage fee of a specific amount to the Gnome Foundation for the use of its trademark, or it might simply change the name altogether.
The Gnome Foundation said it struggled for months, but all the struggle has been in vain. It previously has plans to bring suit against 10 applications by 3rd December, 2014. However this new agreement between Groupon and the not-for-profit software foundation has since changed those plans.
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