When Linus Torvalds built the Linux kernel as a hobby project and announced it on Usenet with his typical understatement in 1991, he licensed it in a way that let anyone use and modify the code. What he didn’t do was trademark the name. That oversight nearly handed the entire Linux ecosystem to an unscrupulous Boston attorney that no one had ever heard of.
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Who was William R. Della Croce Jr.?
A trademark filed on false pretenses
In August 1994, William R. Della Croce Jr. filed a US trademark application for the word Linux, describing it as a “computer operating system software to facilitate computer use and operation.” The application itself claimed he was the original user of the mark and that he didn’t know of anyone else using it at the time, even though he had to file it under the penalty of perjury. The trademark was successfully registered in September 1995 as Registration No. 1916230.
This claim was, of course, absurd on the face of it, as a subsequent legal petition put it. Linux had already been in wide circulation for years. Yggdrasil Computing’s Adam Richter had been shipping CDs with Linux on them since December 1992. Linux Journal had published hundreds of thousands of copies since 1994, and the Linux kernel itself was publicly accessible via the original 1991 Usenet announcement. Della Croce’s claim to have originated the mark had no basis in fact, but the trademark office granted it anyway.
The letters started to arrive
Demanding 10% of everything
Beginning in 1996, Della Croce started sending letters to Linux distributors that demanded 10% royalties on all sales of Linux products, past and present. The letters, citing his registered trademark, covered not only future sales but also demanded retroactive payments.
This wasn’t a nuisance claim from a fringe operator, either. Della Croce had a real, registered US trademark that he felt could be enforced. Linux vendors, including Linux Journal’s parent company, found themselves in genuine legal jeopardy. Ignoring the letters carried risk; paying them would hand over a cut of every Linux product sold, forever, to someone who had nothing to do with building any of it.
The Linux community, which had built its entire identity and business model around open access to software, was looking at a situation where the name of their operating system had been claimed by a stranger with a legal, but incorrect claim.
Fighting back
Five plaintiffs, one petition
Instead of suing Della Croce individually, a coalition formed. In November 1996, five parties filed a Petition to Cancel with the US Trademark Trial and Appeals Board: WorkGroup Solutions, Yggdrasil Computing, Linux Journal (operated by Specialized Systems Consultants), Linux International, and Linus Torvalds himself. Attorney G. Gervaise Davis III of Davis & Schroeder took the case at a greatly reduced rate, as a service to the community.
This petition argued that Della Croce’s registration was “fraudulent and obtained under false pretenses,” and that demanding royalties under a fraudulently obtained trademark through the US mail potentially constituted federal mail fraud under 18 U.S.C. 1341, carrying up to five years in prison. This added some teeth to the claim, which apparently scared Della Croce enough to settle.
The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s process was expected to take well over a year, but it didn’t need to. By August 1997, Della Croce assigned the trademark to Linus Torvalds, was reimbursed for his original filing fees by the petitioners, and the cancellation proceeding was dismissed.
What it means today
The Linux Mark Institute and how the name is protected now
The Linux trademark is currently owned by Torvalds in the US, Germany, the EU, and Japan, and administered on his behalf by the Linux Mark Institute (LMI), now part of the Linux Foundation. The LMI offers a free, perpetual worldwide sublicense to any organization that wants to use “Linux” as part of a trademark for Linux-based products. The only condition is that sublicensees agree not to challenge Torvalds’ ownership.
The whole episode reinforces a lesson that Microsoft’s own open-source history underscores, namely that code being open doesn’t mean the intellectual property around it is protected. The Linux community built something together; it took a coordinated legal fight to make sure no individual could claim the name of what they built. That outcome wasn’t guaranteed, and it nearly went the other way.
It’s likely this case has influenced many other open-source projects into being more deliberate about trademarking their names early. Firefox, Ubuntu, and GNOME are all trademarked (by their legitimate owners). The Della Croce case is a cautionary tale that, luckily, the open-source ecosystem took on quickly to build software in the open but protect its name before someone else grabs it.
Why the trademark still matters
All of this today means that you don’t need a sublicense to write about Linux, sell Linux-branded merchandise, or even say “my Linux machine.” You do need one if you want to market a product or service using the term “Linux” as part of your brand, like “SuperLinux OS.” The difference between fair use and commercial use is the line LMI draws.
For many folks in the Linux community, this can feel like so much background noise. But without the 1997 settlement, every distribution, every Linux-branded product, every company with “Linux” in its name could have faced legitimate legal exposure from a Boston attorney who filed a form and waited for the ecosystem to grow large enough to be worth shaking down. The fact that it resolved the way it did says something about what the community was capable of when it needed to be.
Update 7/2/26: Changed the date in paragraph 3 to better reflect Linux Journal’s start date
