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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?"
As I understand it, trademarks are NOT international, and as long as you're not in NZ, you don't have to listen to them.
IANAL, but if you trademark it in your own country, that will prevent this other group from trademarking it in your country.
If you have any developers in NZ though, that might cause problems.
The jade package in Debian is "James Clark's DSSSL Engine", and it's been there since 1997, and has copyright dates going back to 1994, so I think James has precedence over both you and this company.
I doubt if James would mind that your quite different project has the same name, but he might have some interest in an upstart company threatening people who use the name, and might be willing to work with you on dealing with their threats. His home page is at http://www.jclark.com/ (and the jade project page is at http://www.jclark.com/jade/).