X.org Board of Directors Meeting summary of Tuesday 2009-10-27.
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Official log: https://members.x.org/minutes/xorg-board-2009-10-27.txt

Location is #xf-bod@irc.oftc.net, timeframe of meeting unknown.

Attending board members: Adam Jackson, Alan Coopersmith, Eric Anholt,
Bart Massey.

Absent board members: Carl Worth, Donnie Berkholz, Daniel Stone, Matthieu Herrb

Attending non-board members: Keith Packard.

Bart starts off the meeting explaining the subpoena that X.org received:
"Karen Sandler at SFLC is taking point on this; she has two other attorneys
hooked up". "this is a countersuit by Juniper against a patent troll outfit
called GraphOn that sued them in 2007". "GraphOn has subpoenaed us to obtain
certification and history about the version of X11R5 and X11R6 that they have
from a million years ago, presumably as part of a prior-art defense." "The
attorneys and I are pretty much in agreement that we should not be doing
pro-bono testimony for these people, and will probably respond that they should
hire an expert witness like everyone else." "However, the attorneys are now
getting in touch with counsel for both GraphOn and Juniper to discuss their
positions." "if negotiations break down, we can either file a motion to quash
the subpoena, or we can wait and respond to GraphOn's motion to compel." Bart
believes that the SFLC believes "that Juniper are pretty reasonable folks."

Bart asks if anyone besides Jim Gettys knows where "any old bits are buried",
apart from Alan bringing up some history, and some googling, nothing is added
there. Bart concludes things with "I'll try to keep everyone informed as
things progress."

Bart then moves on to the elections, apparently there are not enough
nominations yet. Bart adds "I plan to renominate the entire outgoing Board
plus keithp today." "I'm wondering whether we want to leave another week for
nominations and make a bigger push." Bart asks Keith: "I'm assuming you'll
take the lead as per usual in sorting out which Intel nominees will accept. :-)"
which Keith answers with "can all accept; the voters will choose between us"
Bart then states "I'm not excited about delaying the election, which would run
into December.  But I'd rather have a few more candidates than slots, esp if
Intel is going to run all of theirs."

Bart tries to pass a motion to "allow one more week for nominations", but since
only Bart and Alan are from the election committee, there was no quorum, and the
vote was deferred to email.

Bart then brings up the trademarks issue: "Does anyone have any definitive list
of what trademarks we do and don't own?  Or know where we can find one?". Alan
states "the docs all still claim X Window System is a trademark (not
registered) of The Open Group", Bart adds "We probably should be concerned
that we apparently have no registered trademark on X." Alan asks "didn't we
talk about this months ago, and debate whether it was worth the tens of
thousands to register it?", to which Bart replies "that was over the logo,
IIRC", to which Alan remarks "would be good if we had minutes to refer to".

Bart states "I think we all thought we owned trademarks on X and on The X
Window System?", "I know I did". Alan remarks "I think X maybe too generic to
trademark, but we've always claimed The X Window System is". Adam brings up
owning versus registering a trademark, to which Bart replies "it takes a long
time to register". Bart concludes this discussion with "I'll talk to our
attorneys.  I also probably need to deal with Leon Shiman and make one more
attempt to get all the TOG docs he owes us.  Sigh."

No motions were presented, no voting took place, motions and voting was
handled over email.