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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

> GitStart allows you to send small coding tasks (from JIRA, etc.) to its global network of developers. They charge a fee for each task — but if the developer does a good enough job that you’d like to hire them more permanently, GitStart also makes a commission.

When was this company created? I thought the Git trademark policy disallows anybody new from naming things “Git”-thing.

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Trademark law is not enforced like copyright law is. It is the responsibility of the trademark owner to take infringing companies to court, or risk losing the mark. Maybe someone should tell Linus and co.

What about GitHub? Is it older than Git's trademark?

It, along with GitLab and a couple others, predate the official policy so they’re grandfathered in.

I was even going to say it was a missed opportunity for gittyup but maybe giddyup is better for TM avoidance!

Amazed you can trademark a slang word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(slang)

I don't think it's just the word - I think it's the combination of the word and the usage.

If your "GitStart" startup was intended to help "unpleasant, silly, incompetent, annoying, senile, elderly or childish person[s]" to start doing something, I think you'd have no problems from a trademark perspective.

If your "GitStart" startup is to help people start doing something with Git, the (trademark-ed) source code management system, then you might be in trouble.

IANAL.

I think GitHub might have problems suing GitStart or other Git- names as they didn't invent Git. It was Linus of course who did.

Agreed - it would probably be the Software Freedom Conservancy, if anyone.

See https://git-scm.com/about/trademark for their policy on this.

If GitHub was granted an exclusive word trademark, then copying some or all of it should result in an accepted opposition by the USPTO. It doesn't matter if the offender company is in another segment, since GitHub is a notorious trademark (i.e. if you try to trademark MacHair for a hair salon, you will get sued by Apple and/or Macdonald's).

However, I don't think it's the case, since the word GIT has been used by other entities long before GitHub came to be. Otherwise, we wouldn't have GitLab, for instance.

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