FreeBSD Palemoon branding violation

[@lbutlr]

On 08 Feb 2018, at 17:52, Michelle Sullivan <michelle at sorbs.net> wrote:
> Don't know - Trademarks don't always have to be registered to be a Trademark... a Registered Trademark can carry the symbol and has had all the due diligence done so its more 'protectable' but the lack of the registration doesn't make it 'not a trademark' just that it's not as defensible for violations.

Speaking with some experience it is nearly impossible to enforce a ™ trademark, especially if there are other trademarks of the word or phrase or name. If you want to use McDonald’s in your name for a hardware store you better be sure you get a ® for it if you want to defend it, since there is already an established ® (more than one, in fact) in place.

Pale Moon is not unique, so at least in the US, not having a fully registered trademark means that any claim of ™ is basically meaningless.

(And in the US you can thrown a ™ on anything you want, it doesn’t mean anything other than that you intend to defend a potential trademark. As an example, at one point an RPG company (TSR?) put a ™ on every instance of the word “Nazi” in one of their rule books.

There are three extant trademarks in the US for “Pale moon”, two for beer and one for “Pale Moon Gang” which appears to be a musical group. There are no trademarks for “palemoon”

<http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=4805%3Ad60yvy.1.1&p_search=searchss&p_L=50&BackReference=&p_plural=yes&p_s_PARA1=&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA1%24LD&expr=PARA1+AND+PARA2&p_s_PARA2=pale+moon&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA2%24COMB&p_op_ALL=AND&a_default=search&a_search=Submit+Query&a_search=Submit+Query>

-- 
'Long Live The Changing Things To A More Equitable State While Retaining
Due Respect For The Traditions Of Our Forebears And Of Course Not
Harming The August Personage Of The Emperor Endeavour!' --Interesting
Times