4 ms·
I wonder if this counts as sufficient defense of the trademark according to the trademark protection laws: if one does not guard a trademark, they run the risk
by necovek 6mo ago
I wonder if this counts as sufficient defense of the trademark according to the trademark protection laws: if one does not guard a trademark, they run the risk of losing it.
Unfortunately, if you care about trademark or just simple copyright infringement (I haven't checked what license is Notepad++ under), they might need to enlist a lawyer sooner rather than later.
- archy_ 6mo agoThere's clearly demand for notepad++ on Mac. Refusing to meet users where they are at with a simple port feels like squatting on a trademark. I find myself sympathetic to the Mac porter more than Don Ho.
- SllX 6mo agoIf he were just squatting on a trademark this would be an open and shut case under US Trademark law. The trademark is still in active use for Notepad++ though. That’s not squatting.
- nkrisc 6mo agoHow is he squatting the trademark when it’s actively being used? Not releasing a version for some platform doesn’t make it squatting in the slightest. The port just can’t use the trademark. Call it something else.
- kube-system 6mo agoThat's not how any of this works. Trademarks aren't invalidated by someone not liking how you do business. There's demand for Crystal Pepsi but you can't go make a new soft drink yourself and call it Crystal Pepsi. If you want to say you are Pepsi, you have to be the Pepsi.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- jsLavaGoat 6mo agoACKSHUALLY, abandonment is a thing with marks, that's why companies spend money to keep them in minimal use to avoid that, or, like Pepsi, lobby to create "famous" marks.
- kube-system 6mo agoNeither "Pepsi" nor "Notepad++" are abandoned.
- jsLavaGoat 6mo agoNotepad "iteration mark" is probably "merely descriptive" anyway (= And did I say they were? I just said it was a thing when someone acted like they were rights in gross like other IP. But thanks for showing off how smart you are! Always love to meet fellow people on the Internet who studied and practiced trademark law like I'm sure you did. Pepsi isn't abandoned but Crystal Pepsi was close to having been. Thanks though, I wasn't aware you could still buy Pepsi lol.
- tardedmeme 6mo agoWhat if my Crystal Pepsi is just pepsi mixed with crystals or pepsi made into a crystal? Then it's an accurate description of the product?
- tanseydavid 6mo agoPepsi does not want you corrupting their brand by mixing it with Something-Else and calling it Something-Else-Pepsi. Accurate description is not at all what the legal issue is about.
- kube-system 6mo agoTrademarks indicate provenance, they don't describe product characteristics.
- tardedmeme 6mo agothe provenance is that it's pepsi mixed with crystals therefore crystal pepsi just like pepsi bottle crate is a crate for bottles of pepsi
- croes 6mo agoThere is a demand for the functionality, no need to use the name just to push the port.
- pessimizer 6mo ago"Squatting on a trademark" makes no sense. You might as well say that I'm squatting on my name because I'm not allowing other people to sign contracts for me. You can clone someone's project without pretending to be them. They literally put his bio up. Call it something else, put your own bio up.
- nagaiaida 6mo ago> They literally put his bio up. ...crediting him as the author of the original, not the mac port. without commenting on anything to do with trademarks, in what way is that even slightly pretending to be him? why would they put another, separate bio alongside as the person doing a mac port if they were intending to masquerade as the original author?
- ImPostingOnHN 6mo agoIf the "author" of this port respected Don Ho enough to credit him in the contributors section of his project, then why didn't he respect Don Ho enough to ask first? If the "author" of this port respected Don Ho enough to credit him in the contributors section of his project, why doesn't he respect Don Ho enough to comply with the request to take down the violations? This conflict indicates that the respect was never there, and thus the motivation for the bio was probably credibility laundering.
- lukan 6mo agoHe did ask first, but Don Ho did not respond. (Which is his right and no permission to do anything)
- ImPostingOnHN 6mo agoDon writes, > For context: I received an email from Andrey Letov on April 8, 2026, informing me that he had just ported Notepad++ to macOS, and ask for contact, without providing further info. So no asking to use trademarks beforehand, and no asking Don if it's okay to include him on the contributor page for the violating software.
- nikanj 6mo agoThere is clearly a demand for sports cars being sold for under $10k, so it was ok for me to steal your car and sell it cheap
- bartread 6mo agoBut you can trivially easily run Notepad++ on Mac using Wine. It works flawlessly. Nobody is keeping anything from anybody.
- yazantapuz 6mo agoCall it notemac++, tell that its a fork of notepad++.
- outofpaper 6mo agoNotepad++ is not registered with the USPTO (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office). Searches around will turn up nothing in the U.S. database. The name is trademarked in France (via INPI, the French patent office), which is why the maintainer has been able to send cease-and-desist notices in recent cases (e.g., the unauthorized “Notepad++ for Mac” site). In the U.S. its only covered by common-law trademark rights from long use, as there’s no federal registration.
- kube-system 6mo agoYou don't need a trademark registration to send a cease-and-desist... you can just send one.