The somewhat common standard in trademark law (which I am uneducated about) is "use it or lose it" (I know five words of trademark law...) -- Gruber hasn't real

The somewhat common standard in trademark law (which I am uneducated about) is "use it or lose it" (I know five words of trademark law...) -- Gruber hasn't really used it, so he loses it. Is it fair? I think Wittgenstein would call it fair. If "Markdown" in popular usage doesn't refer to a Perl program by John Gruber but to a formatting mechanism in use on reddit and github, then Markdown is a formatting mechanism in use on StackExchange et alii in the current language-game. If the majority of Markdown users were using Markdown.pl and/or any other software or system promulgated by John Gruber, he has a case. What we do know is that reddit and github have called their systems -- and various extensions, like github's syntax highlighting -- "Markdown" for years, without so much as a peep. I think "Standardized Markdown" might be a little more accurate, possibly easier on the creator... ...but I also suspect that some part of Gruber's annoyance relates to his not being included at all in the initial discussions. Was it really reasonable to work on this project for "two years" (does it take two years to write a ten-page standard?) without sincerely reaching out to the initial author? For the most part, the developers of $qualifier Markdown clarified syntactic ambiguities and added a slightly less painful code-block syntax. Most of the "heavy lifting" in this format was done by John Gruber, so I can appreciate his annoyance even if I disagree.