Trade mark law seeks to balance the interests of people with distinctive brands to protect against the interests of the wider public in being able to use words

Trade mark law seeks to balance the interests of people with distinctive brands to protect against the interests of the wider public in being able to use words in a descriptive sense to describe their product. I personally think moot is very much descriptive of the 'discussion' in general. Moot, the 4chan creator would most probably argue the name has acquired distinctiveness through usage but this generally requires a high evidential threshold in terms of the reasonable person having familiarity with the term as a unique identifier. Whilst if 4chan had been called moot from the start he would have had a stronger case, I do not think the reasonable internet user would be aware of moot's name let alone identify it with online discussion.