Quote from: Vlad2Vlad on December 17, 2014, 11:44:15 PM

Bitcoin the trademark, yes.

But Bitcoin the currency is owned by the Bitcoin community which took it over under the rules and laws of open source software as outline under the MIT license.

Nobody holding the Bitcoin trademark can stop Bitcoin, its developers or its community from doing as they please with Bitcoin the currency.

This is what Josh Garza doesn't seem to understand about these open source [MIT licensed] Crypto-Currencies.

He cannot stop PayCoin (the original) even if he actually got lucky somehow and attained the PayCoin trademark.

You know why it was trademarked? If you do then you'd see how that will avoid a whole can of worms.

Bitcoin should have been trademarked by the foundation and then MIT-licensed like the rest of the asset.

Right now it's a legal crowbar for anyone interested in toppling bitcoin. They can't attack bitcoin the network directly.

But if you held bitcoin trademark AND started up an alternative bitcoin network, you could sue the shit out of any and all merchants who sticks a "pay with bitcoin" text or graphic on their site.

Effectively killing much of its usability and adoption.

Why do you think someone actually spent huge amounts of money trying to secure the trademark (bitcoin) in the first place? Lucky us they didn't succeed that time, but it does show that communities and crowds have zero know-how about laws.

I'm no lawyer, and this may not be the way it is of course. But unless you seek legal counsel you have a much higher chance of staying SOL as ever.

However, with the available evidence it does seem like a plausible scenario.