Trademarking Open-Source Projects?

dautelle asks: "I had the nasty surprise to receive a letter from a company in New-Zealand asking me to stop using the 'jade' name they have recently trademarked (my open source project has been Java Addition to Default Environment or JADE for short, long before their trademark filing date). I am going to comply, but I wonder if our open-source projects should be trademarked (cost >300$) to prevent such misfortune?"

Comments

JADE NZ was using the name first

[Joff_NZ]

As for who had the name first - From the History on Dautelle's page:

"version 1.0 was # September 12, 2000: Official release of JADE 1.0"

I myself am a New Zealander, in fact, I work just down the road from JADE's HQ, and from their History Page

"Jade Software Corporation combined its research and development capability with its real-world IT experience to create a new enterprise application development environment called JADE that was launched in 1996."

There it is.. Case Closed.