Oddbean new post about login | logout Nothing forces you to apply for a trademark. You can just accept that people may use the term "blockclock" to talk about block clocks. Coinkite is also a trademarked term, and it's a distinctive one that I have no issue with. They can just call their product a Coinkite Blockclock and everything would be fine. Anyway, this is irrelevant here: the competition they're threatening used the term BTClock. Which ironically is arguably _more_ distinctive than Blockclock due to the distinct spelling.
Incidentally, if you actually search the Canadian trademark databases you'll see there's four Blockclock trademarks filed, for both the name and the logo; the logo is distinctly different from the BTClock. Though it's still very generic. Just seven white boxes on a black background. Reminds me of how Apple tried to get a design patent on the black rectangle phone design...
> You can just accept that people may use the term "blockclock" to talk about block clocks. That doesn't work if an adversarial company files the trademark instead. An evil version of Djuri could have taken down Coinkite's Github and hosting that way. If he had trademarked BTCClock and there no Blockclock trademark already. The only defense against such an attack is already having a trademark, because that is the only way you're going to quickly and successfully appeal a takedown.
That's not how trademarks work. Previously having used a conflicting trademark is a defense. There's a long list of examples of big companies trying to use their trademarks against pre-existing users and failing.
I think you're talking about how they work in the court system. Unfortunately much of the world is run by the kangaroo courts of Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon which have very different rules. E.g. on the topic copyright, having obviously written a book yourself is not enough evidence to get it listed. Once their black box system flags something, you're fucked unless you take them to court or unless you can give them the piece of paper they want. https://sprovoost.nl/2022/06/01/amazon-and-the-dystopian-future-of-book-censorship/
I think you are confusing trademark with patent. Trademarks are names or stylistic art providing distinctiveness to a business, such as a logo with or without the trade name. The shape or orientation of components of the block-clock don't qualify as a trademark whatsoever. If you trademarked blockclock and not btcclock, you are SOL. If anything NVK's concern falls under copyright, and copyright only protects actual artwork such as the specific design, exact dimensions, shape and color of the blockclock. All three are in the category of intellectual property under US federal statutes, but trademark is specific to allowing a company to protect an identifying mark they use to distinguish their product or business activity. NVK's beef appears to be that someone else made a cheaper blockclock, called it something else and didn't infringe on any of his intellectual property whatsoever, so unless he can prove otherwise he can cry harder for all I care.
https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=90900261&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch Broadly describing your product in your trademark registration doesn't mean you can prevent competitors from making a similar product under a different name