Quote from: DecentralizeEconomics on January 07, 2015, 08:41:22 PM

So, let me get this straight. You tried to trademark it and would have, if you could have convinced the USPTO, but since they denied your application, you come on here and attempt to prove your "decentralization" by advocating the fact that you're not "trademarked" when in fact you attempted to do so. Yeah, that sounds TOTALLY above board. Hahaha

You might want to get around to changing those logos "Mr. Decentralization", it's been over THREE months since your application was rejected. I'd hate for people to get the idea that you're a company.
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Remember, BitShares is a company, not a currency. It is a unmanned, decentralized company that produces and trades interest-paying "smart currencies" as its product. So judge it by whether it is a good idea and implementation for a company, not a currency. Then you can get past all the accepted rules that (may or may not) apply to future currencies and see clearly what the investment opportunity truly is here.

The trademark symbol is not an indication that you are a company, it protects a brand to avoid consumer confusion. One of our biggest independent supporters thought it would be good to protect the name for that reason and paid for the trademark application. He is an independent agent and can do what he pleases. We appreciated his efforts.

You can put on anything; it simply means that you consider it to be a trademark for your product or service. The registered trademark bug ® is used to indicate that your trademark is registered with the government, which gives you a wider range of statutory remedies in case of infringement. You only use the registered bug if you've actually registered the trademark formally, but you can use freely.

The BitShares graphic was developed by another graphic's artist. All of the web sites and forums and blogs, etc. are run by separate independent parties in the decentralized BitShares ecosystem. They will all make their own independent decisions. I recommend they continue to use TM for the above reasons.

I assume no responsibility for their actions, I merely try to communicate the BitShares vision and help out wherever I can as, once again, an independent contributor compensated by the token owners of the blockchain to run around making myself useful as best I can.

The business about whether BitShares is a company or currency is a pedagogical metaphor selection issue which was asked and answered multiple places in this very thread, for example, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=913075.msg10059744#msg10059744

The best answer to this question was given by Bytemaster himself in his article What is BitShares? where he used TEN different nested metaphors to describe it. It is eye-opening in its scope.