NewsForge: OpenSSH: Let the community decide trademark fight

“Theo de Raadt, co-creator of OpenSSH, says he hopes the
community, not the courts, will decide a trademark skirmish in
which SSH Communications Security Corp. is demanding that the
project stop using the name it’s been using since 1995.”

“Tatu Ylönen, chairman and CTO of SSH Communications
Security, sent a letter to the OpenSSH developers list Feb. 14
demanding OpenSSH stop using the SSH part of its name. In that
letter, published on Slashdot, he wrote, “I developed SSH (Secure
Shell), started using the name for it, established a company using
the name, all of our products are marketed using the SSH brand, and
we have created a fairly widely known global brand using the name.
Unauthorized use of the SSH mark by the OpenSSH group is
threatening to destroy everything I have built on it during the
last several years.”

“But de Raadt points to a licensing agreement that allowed
independent versions of SSH before Ylönen received a trademark
in 1996, and he wonders why Ylönen has taken five years to
decide to enforce the trademark.”

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