Brand

Besides the contributors and the community of users, there is a third circle of interaction for digital commons with the general public. These interactions do not take place directly with the service (otherwise they would be users), but with a brand, which can be a name, a logo, a domain name, a graphic design… Brands represent reputational assets for the digital commons. To be consistent with this status, their benefits must therefore be shared and protected without re-appropriation, like other kinds of assets.

Availability

Providing the elements that make up the brand is particularly important in the case of contributive commons, since the contributions will be oriented in the first place by the use of these elements. If an actor has control over them, he will be able to re-direct the contributions towards his own service which may not be operated as a common.

In the case of a contributive commons service, the elements making up the brand are legally protected and freely available, provided that they comply with a charter aimed solely at protecting the reputational capital of the commons and not a particular actor.

Operational recommendation: provide all trademark elements on a web page, register them with national patent office[^20] and adapt the Wikipedia Trademark Policy to define recommended and prohibited use cases. The prohibited cases should be justified by highlighting the potential danger to reputation assets.

[^20]: This registration is not necessary to protect against a competing registration as the service is publicly available and anteriority will therefore be easy to demonstrate. This registration deters ill-intentioned parties, facilitates the transfer of the intellectual property to another structure, and enhances the value of the registering structure which is more likely to consider the service as a capital to be maintained.