You can totally reference a trademark without infringing on it, see Nominative Use / Nominative Fair Use[1]. Whether or not a usage falls under Nominative Use i

You can totally reference a trademark without infringing on it, see Nominative Use / Nominative Fair Use[1]. Whether or not a usage falls under Nominative Use is ultimately up to a court to decide. Of course a company can send C&D letters whenever they like, that doesn't mean it's going to hold up in court. With all that said I have never heard about Mojang or Microsoft sending C&D letters over someone giving their project a name vaguely referencing Minecraft. Do you actually have any examples, because when I google Mojang and C&D I only get examples of Mojang receiving C&D letters, not sending them. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use