Legal (historical)

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. faces a breathtaking array of legal issues on a daily basis. The Foundation's legal needs are often related to copyright, trademarks, marketing, donations, tax and the law of associations and partnerships. The Foundation often needs advice on how to handle those threatening litigation or who are disruptive to the community, in addition to regular transactional and licensing issues. In many respects WMF is like any small business; in others, it faces unique challenges unlike any other online organization in the world.

While there are many Wikipedia projects, at their root, they are all the work of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) corporation in the State of Florida, USA. Interested people can join the Legal Department.

The roster of interested legal folks may be found at the Legal Department.

Organizational note: Please place all pages dealing with legal issues in Category:Legal.

Current Issues

• Usage of term Wikimedia in The Star Publications Sdn. Bhd. in one of their weekly columns. Diagramma Della Verita 07:57, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Futures issues

• Logos copyright assignments and trademarking logos (as opposed to names)
• Trademark compliance (dealing with misuse of trademarks, when they can be used and by whom)
• Policy on trademark notification (i.e. when and where should the ^SM,™ and/or ® notices be placed without being intrusive to inform public of common law and statutory entitlements and claims such as registered status of Wikipedia® and other marks such as WikiNews™, MediaWiki™) and trademark link from skin.

Long pending issues

• GDFL & Creative Commons issue
• privacy policy (long pendinnnnnng issue)
• terms of use (see w:en:terms of use)

Studies on special topics

• Copyright
• Trademarks
• Marketing
• Donations
• Tax
• Associations and partnership

Useful internal links

• Legal Policies - Wikimedia Foundation
• Legal Department
• James explains law
• Category:Copyright

Corporations

Wikimedia Foundation

• Wikimedia Foundation Bylaws (PDF file)
• Wikimedia Foundation Bylaws (local copy)
• French translation
• Italian translation

Wikimedia Deutschland

• Wikimedia Deutschland Satzung: partially translated in English here

Wikimédia France

Wikimédia France is a nonprofit association incorporated under the 1901 law.

• Statuts de Wikimédia France (PDF file) - French language
• Statuts de Wikimédia France (local copy) - French language
• Wikimédia France bylaws - English language (pending translation)