Comment by marcjschmidt
2 days ago
> decided to trademark your project name
I decided to protect the name because I liked it and wanted to build upon it in the future. Be it OSS, or further commercial offerings.
I hoped to get also protection against corporations that just try to register the name or very similar ones and then decided to get me deleted or sue me for infringements.
In EU it's first to file principle, which means whoever holds the mark, has the right. This means if I would not have registered it, the company could just register "Deepkit" or "Deepki" and sue me to death. Now that I lost the trademark (not totally final, I can appeal), I risk getting sued for having a too similar name - which is exactly what I tried to avoid by having a registered trademark.
Did I make some mistakes with appealing and not collecting enough user data? Likely. Was it too naive from me? Yes. But I think reasonable and the whole idea behind trademarks is to protect projects like this. I could be wrong though, am not an expert.
Too similar a name also only matters if you're in the same space and there is "risk of confusion" with customers
Tell that Apple
If you're talking about apple music vs apple records, they actually got sued over it and they had to sign a licensing agreement with apple records to continue using apple music.
3 replies →
At least Australia's trademark law allows continuing use if you were already using it, whether you registered it or not.
If you keep the US trademark, they might eventually give up on the EU one.
Or .. maybe you could sell it to them or use it as a lever to get the EU one.