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Comment by rpadovani | Hacker News Reader

I was confused, so I checked: this is not related in any way to the Infrastructure as Code tool.

The title reads like some sort of experimental tech incubator within Hashicorp's Terraform team is shadily transferring millions. Hashicorp should sue for trademark dilution.

They chose a single English word as their trademark, there are dozens of others already using very similar marks:

https://uspto.report/Search/terraform

They shouldn't be surprised if someone else also uses the same word.

I'm a big fan of Yiotro Games and his naming system for Antiyoy/Bleentoro/Achikaps/Shproty: Come up with a series of letters that are easy to read, pronounce, and remember, and which are not already words when naming a project. This results in no trouble with trademarks or domain names, gives easy SEO, and isn't that hard.

Trademarks are industry specific, you specify what products/services you'll be using it for when you register. Because, for example, consumers aren't confused by an airline named "Delta" and a plumbing manufacturer called "Delta".

Hashicorp's registration has a pretty decent lock on various descriptions of computer software.

I got a good laugh out of Hashicorp's trademark registration.

Cutlery??? Musical Instruments??? Fire-extinguishing apparatus??? Was someone drunk when filing?

As part of their trademark documentation they took screenshots of Google search results and API docs (LOL)

https://uspto.report/TM/88470183

Primary US Classes

    021: Electrical Apparatus, Machines and Supplies

    023: Cutlery, Machinery, Tools and Parts Thereof

    026: Measuring and Scientific Appliances

    036: Musical Instruments and Supplies

    038: Prints and Publications

Primary International Class

    009 - Primary Class
    (Electrical and scientific apparatus) Scientific, nautical, surveying, electric, photographic, cinematographic, optical, weighing, measuring, signaling, checking (supervision), lifesaving and teaching apparatus and instruments; apparatus for recording, transmission or reproduction of sound or images; magnetic data carriers, recording discs; automatic vending machines and mechanisms for coin operated apparatus; cash registers, calculating machines, data processing equipment and computers; fire-extinguishing apparatus.

The same goes for their T logo trademark: https://uspto.report/TM/88470285

All of Hashicorp: https://uspto.report/company/Hashicorp-Inc

Why does everyone want to sue everyone these days?

Free money (or the perception of it anyway).

You literally have to or you risk losing your trademark.

Patents and copyright you can not enforce if you choose not to but trademarks are a different animal.

Registering a trademark isn't about suing anyone. It's about keeping others from frivolously suing you.

If you are successful but don't register, someone _will_ register it in the same industry and sue you for infringement. They'll also some times hijack your Amazon listings if you are a seller.

Prior use is an absolute defence. You might have problems with expansion (geographic, and type of business).

This is not legal advice, just my opinion.

IANAL, but I think that's only true in the USA. Most other places are first to file, not first to use.

And even then, that doesn't prevent a frivolous suit in the USA

No, for trademarks it's standard practice to allow prior use to continue (USA, EU, UK, at least). You can have a trade mark for decades, and be protected by passing-off law, then come to register it and find a brand new company has registered that mark, but that doesn't mean you can't continue your own trade with that mark, but can mean you're going to infringe on their registered right if you change (eg enter a new TM class, enter a new geographic region).

This prevents established companies from being damaged by opponents registering their marks.

A company doesn't own their trademarks in the same sense as a patent or copyright, it's not like protecting IP. It's about protecting the consumer from being fooled.

I was also confused, thank you for checking and posting.

How were you confused? Did you not read the article?

1. The article does not mention that this is unaffiliated with Hashicorp.

2. > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

1. It's a crypto news website 2. Why would you comment on an article if you haven't read it?

I call it "optimistic branch prediction".

Why read the article when you can go to the comments to find a correction? I very rarely if ever read the article these days as usually commentors here have much more pertinent and correct information.

Same here, I almost fell out of my chair.

I believe this is the name of the parent company behind the Luna cryptocurrency.

Yes. Hashicorp is the company behind Terraform, Terraform Labs is the company behind Luna.

The way you can tell them apart is that Hashicorp Terraform stabilizes at the state you configure it to, whereas Terraform Labs stabilizes at zero.

Hahahaha, spilled my coffee over this :P

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