I have no clue who approached whom ("documented issue") and who replied what to whom regarding Darkcoin inclusion. But if the future Saint Coin approaches the same people and they would laugh into the Saint Coin's face, how that would reflect for the new brand, being a laughing stock?

Once should ASSESS the value of say BTC-E inclusion (24.80% of the BTC trading volume on Bitfinex) and have an agreement that the Saint Coin would be included once it drops its Darkcoin name. Same with merchants, providing these are not my friend's dive in Mexico but something of assessable value. Otherwise, yes, "doing nothing" and let the technology grow might be the best solution.

I should bring up a situation that I came across which highlights the need for a rebrand.  I was at recently at a dinner with the CEO of Expresscoin (whom added Darkcoin months ago as per my suggestion).  He directly informed me that he'd been getting pressure from his investors to drop Darkcoin as they were worried about the legal scrutiny it could bring Expresscoin.  I asked him to hold off for a bit before doing anything as there would be some announcements made, to which he agreed.  So as you can see, Darkcoins problems are a lot like racism.  You show up for endless interviews and everyone seems nice but you can't understand why you never get hired.  Evan has done a fantastic job of pushing out features which are important to users and will clearly lead to consumer adoption.  The problem is that this is meaningless if there is little to no adoption on the merchant side.  A rebrand helps balance this issue.

With a rebrand we can reach out to industries that previously wouldn't consider using Darkcoin due to the fact that Dark is often associated with something sinister.  A good example of this is the medicinal marijuana industry.  They have massive problems because MMJ is illegal on a federal level but not on the state level.  As a result, banks are completely unwilling to work with them.  This industry is desperate for a solution and using crypto / DASH should be an easy sell, creating a HUGE opportunity for us.  However, consider this: As a dispensary whom already has considerable legal scrutiny, would you be willing to take a risk and start doing business using a cryptocurrency named Darkcoin?  This shows how important the brand is, and how we really need to consider what is on the horizon and where we want to go from here.