Who owns Wikipedia?, I am not a lawyer Options

[Peter Damian]

I've heard claims here occasionally that Wikipedia could be sold off. Is that possible? Who actually owns it? What is it they actually own? Could anyone get their hands on it and make a ton of money from ? What would they be getting their hands on?

[gomi]

Legally, the Wikimedia Foundation (or whatever it is called) owns Wikipedia.

Owning Wikipedia means these things:

1) Owning the trademarks, domain names, logos, and assorted intellectual property associated with Wikipedia and its related sites;
2) Owns the right to make agreements of any sort, including exclusive ones, surrounding and affecting its online systems and services;
3) Owns the right (subject to the limitations of a not-for-profit organization) to dispose of (by sale, license, or other agreement) any of its assets, including (potentially) any of the Wikipedia sites and related marks and materials.

This is not an exhaustive list. The Wikimedia Foundation would be within its right to sell the Wikipedia site to a for-profit company in exchange for a revenue stream. That for-profit company could shut down all user accounts and install advertising if they wanted to. The resulting revenue stream would (for a time) be very substantial. The Wikimedia Foundation would need to use the proceeds from such a sale for its charitable purpose.

There are potential complications if such a sale is construed as disposing of "substantially all" of its assets, or if it didn't get a fair market value for the asset, but those are details.

I'm not saying this is likely to happen, but it is all legally possible.