4 ms·
He's already lost it to genericization. Trademarks distinguish vendors in a market place; plenty of different people operate services that provide "Markdown" fo
by ealexhudson 12y ago
He's already lost it to genericization. Trademarks distinguish vendors in a market place; plenty of different people operate services that provide "Markdown" formatting that are not the original vendor and are incompatible. Without having taken any steps to license other people's uses of the term, it's not operating as a trademark in any normal sense (unregistered or not).
- RubyPinch 12y agoI don't know how well genericization applies to this, markdown was a loosely defined specification, intentionally encouraging modification. all the "incompatible" versions of markdown are within what he intended. further, its just the name of a spec, should the owner of a spec really be expected to continuously hunt down and test/validate every implementation of their specification? that doesn't exactly seem possible in the slightest. I don't think he would have trademark protections for something like this for other reasons, I do wonder if there is anything similar that applies in this situation
- njr123 12y ago> should the owner of a spec really be expected to continuously hunt down and test/validate every implementation of their specification? I'm pretty sure thats exactly what trademark law says you have to do. You have to defend your trademark. You can't go ten years letting everyone use the Markdown brand where ever they want, and then suddenly decide one day you want to start controlling it.