1) Hi Rob. Could you tell us about the trademark decision. What changes will this have for the Joomla project?
Well, Steve …
2) What will the policy be regarding prior use?
The Joomla! project has always taken a liberal approach to use of the Joomla! name and logo and we intend to continue to be as liberal as we can while fulfilling our responsibility to protect the integrity of the Joomla! brand. As long as the usage complies with the terms set out in the brand manual and our trademark guide (no pornography, no warez, no trademarks, not confusing, etc.) all that is required is to register the use with OSM using the form on the OSM site and add the license disclaimer to your site. If for some reason your use fails to meet the conditions, we will let you know what the problem is so that it can be rectified. The disclaimer simply states something to the affect of “Joomla! is a registered trademark of Open Source Matters, Inc.”
3) Any guidelines before registering new domains? Any ways to use joomla in the name correctly or should people stick to jom, joom or j?
The policy with domains is pretty much the same as with a regular name/logo usage. We are not concerned with j*, jom*, or joom* domains unless they will create confusion with the Joomla! name.
Hopefully these will help you get started but it might be more efficient for us to just have a conversation about this. I imagine there are a lot of potential sticking points that people will be concerned about and I generally find a dialog to be more efficient at fleshing these issues out than an e-mail thread. I know you mentioned it the other day but I was a bit pre-occupied. How does that sound now?