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?

[Kelly Martin]

Greg pretty much nailed it: the main transactable item of value related to Wikipedia is the name itself, more specifically the trademark "Wikipedia" and the (related) domain names of wikipedia.org and wikipedia.com. The Foundation currently holds all of these things and could dispose of them if it so saw fit, but the proceeds of such a sale would remain trapped within the Foundation and could only be used for purposes consistent with its tax-exempt status and purpose as declared in its charter and bylaws, or else conveyed to some other tax-exempt entity (or escheated to the state).

The Foundation is also in possession of various information that is potentially valuable (such as page access statistics) that it presently does not share publicly and could theoretically monetize, but it has shown little interest in doing so, possibly because doing so could jeopardize its charitable status, not to mention piss off its customer base.