Python Software Foundation Settles UK Trademark Dispute

The Python Software Foundation (PSF) said on Friday it has reached an “amicable” settlement of its dispute with PO Box Holdings, a UK company that purchased the python.co.uk domain in 1997 and had applied to use the word “python” as a trademark for European cloud services.

Under the terms of the agreement PO Box Holdings, which uses the trading name Veber, has withdrawn its trademark filing and will rebrand its “Python” cloud products to an as yet undetermined name, the PSF said.

Python brand

“To Veber’s credit, they were willing to recognise the Python brand without protracted negotiations,” said PSF chairman Van Lindberg in a statement.

The PSF added that it “thanked the Python community for their immense outpouring of support throughout the dispute, both financially and through the letter writing campaign undertaken by organisations across European Union member states”.

The organisation had called upon customers and supporters to submit documentation of the use of the “Python” brand to refer to the Python programming language maintained by the PSF in Europe, as well as asking for contributions toward a possible legal action.

The PSF maintains that, while it only applied for an official European trademark recently in the wake of the dispute with Veber, it has certain trademark rights to the word “python” due to the programming language’s long history of usage in Europe.

Veber said it agreed with the PSF that its proposed usage of the word “python”, particularly in conjunction with the use of the python.co.uk domain, would have caused confusion, and said it has withdrawn its trademark application.

“The use of the Python name for our cloud server and backup business has ceased with the services now available in Europe from Veber,” stated Veber managing director Tim Poultney. “This agreement will remove potential confusion between the Python software language and our cloud services business.”

The python.co.uk domain itself, while it is no longer in use and now returns a “not found” error message, remains under the ownership of Our Holdings Ltd, another name for PO Box Holdings, according to WHOIS directory data accessed on Friday morning.

Long-running conflict

The dispute began last year, after the PSF objected to Veber’s plans to launch “Python Cloud”, but escalated in February after the PSF published a blog post on the matter calling for help from its developers and customers.

The resulting flood of traffic to python.co.uk rendered the website unreachable, and Our Holdings managing director Tim Poultney said he had received death threats from PSF sympathisers. Poultney said he had suspended his company’s Facebook and Twitter accounts due to the hostile comments they received.

Following the denial-of-service actions the PSF’s Lindberg called for moderation on the part of PSF supporters, saying that “any hacktivism or threats will end up hurting the Python community in the long run”.

Python is an open source programming language widely used as a scripting language for web applications, with users including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and NASA, as well as Our Holdings itself.

The language was implemented beginning in 1989 and the PSF has held a US trademark since 2004; the organisation said it began the process of registering a European trademark in 2009, but put the process on hold due to budgetary constraints caused by the global economic downturn.

The PSF had been aware of Veber’s use and ownership of the python.co.uk domain, but had not taken action earlier because the organisation didn’t feel the trademark issue was urgent, PSF chairman Van Lindberg said in his online appeal.

Lindberg argued that organisations offering access to Python in Europe, for instance as part of a hosting plan, risked being found in violation of Our Holdings’ trademark if Veber’s trademark had been granted.

It is common for businesses operating in different fields to use the same trademarked name, one of the best-known examples of this in the IT industry being computer maker Apple and record label Apple Music. As The Guardian remarked, the European trademark database shows that 16 other companies besides Our Holdings have applied for trademarks on the word “Python”, with the earliest dating back to 1964.

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