> Wrong, that is the prototype of a knee-jerk action.
No it isn't; and he made that clear, he objects to their actions and is taking action of his own.
> Last but not least, whining about it in public in the hope "something will happen" is pathetic.
No, it's called protesting, and it's exactly the correct thing to do. Calling it pathetic is itself pathetic.
> hat I'd suggest (though now it is too late): Rename the module to comply with legal claims, put up a new module under the old name that throws errors when called that describe the reason so developers see it and put shame on the threatening company/lawyers.
You're completely missing his point if you think this suggestion is at all reasonable.
Just because they've trademarked "kik" doesn't give them complete control over all instances of that 3 letter string in the world. See the 8 factors of trademark infringement, and trademark law in general; this is just a kik lawyer being threat happy.
> Just because they've trademarked "kik" doesn't give them complete control over all instances of that 3 letter string in the world.
Agreed - hence why I looked up the actual trademark in the first place. I wasn't expecting to find out they were in the software development business too.
1. The marks appear very similar, with the possible exception that kik the company appears to have no meaning behind "kik". Similar enough that I have to specify "kik the company."
2. Both appear to provide services aimed at developers.
3. The plaintiff's mark appears to be strong enough to fill the first page of Google, and for overprotective parents to overreact to.
4. I was momentarily confused which kik I was clicking through to at least once.
Am I misweighing or misinterpreting things to think that the first 3 points, at least, point towards infringement? Do you agree that these appear to be among the more important ones?
"The first five of these factors are examined in every trademark infringement action."
"Of these eight factors, the first two are arguable the most important."
> ... and trademark law in general
If you have any recommendations, feel free to share.
US trademark is what's dangerous to NPM Inc., the US company running NPM. We don't know anything about how they "handled" it before it came to this, except that they did decide against the article author. What should they have done differently?
It's not good that NPM-the-piece-of-infrastructure is vulnerable to this, maybe a registry like this shouldn't be under control of a single company, but we don't know enough to decide what options NPM Inc-the-company had.
I hope they clean up/better communicate their policies around this, once they have them figured out (e.g. the package dispute page doesn't discuss trademarks).
Not given them control over his code just because it had their name on it. They could have taken it down, but they didn't, they just gave some company ownership of his module, not cool.
> He made it clear he doesn't want to consider it a knee jerk, which has approximately zero relationship to whether it actually is.
A knee jerk reaction is an immediate unthinking emotional reaction; when you detail out your thought process in a lengthy well articulated blog post to explain your actions, it isn't knee jerk by definition. There was nothing at all unthinking about his actions or his protest. Point in fact, when someone explains to you why something isn't a knee jerk reaction, it automatically isn't. His making it clear has an approximately 100% relationship to the fact that it isn't.
No it isn't; and he made that clear, he objects to their actions and is taking action of his own.
> Last but not least, whining about it in public in the hope "something will happen" is pathetic.
No, it's called protesting, and it's exactly the correct thing to do. Calling it pathetic is itself pathetic.
> hat I'd suggest (though now it is too late): Rename the module to comply with legal claims, put up a new module under the old name that throws errors when called that describe the reason so developers see it and put shame on the threatening company/lawyers.
You're completely missing his point if you think this suggestion is at all reasonable.