Comment by athrowaway3z

Having bought a trademark in the EU and the US for an open-source project as well (with the US being denied). It sucks, it's a waste of time and money, and my advice is to not bother.

None of the 'normal' eventualities are all that scary or bad.

If a trademark holder asks you to change your name, just change your name - your users don't care as much as you. If done well, you can milk a name change into getting more attention to your project.

If it's a name you've used longer than them and are really attached to, you could gamble and just keep using it - all a trademark does is let them recover costs IFF they can prove your claim of use it is false and harmful by being in the same category.

Lawsuits really aren't the fun kind of thing a 150m dollar company wants to get entangled in, especially held in unfamiliar foreign courts they might lose - unless maybe you go around attacking their trademark.