DISQUS

I fear that we're getting sidetracked defending Sherman and dissecting what Matt's written, rather than focusing on the central topic, which is: does Automattic / Wordpress have a legal obligation to defend its trademark? The answer is YES.

So that's a first important realization, just as Microsoft is going to defend Excel and, from personal experience, Porsche is going to defend its own brand name (I own Porschecountry.info, but only after negotiating with their attorneys and explaining why I wanted it), they are required to defend the Wordpress trademark, so that it continues to be a viable trademark at all.

The question, then, is whether Matt and his group are prosecuting potentially offending domain and company names *fairly* or not, and from what I can tell, he is not.

By a nice coincidence of timing, Matt and I had dinner together in Seattle just a few nights ago, and I asked him about this issue. He told me what you've read on this page, that he just doesn't like these two companies and feels that they're spammy or otherwise not true to the spirit of his entire effort.

Is that fair? Well, Sherman's not a spammer or hustler, in my experience. Is it legal for one or two violators to be singled out in the first phase of prosecuting trademark violators? It sure is, as far as I know. Is it a smart strategy? Probably not, but Matt really is a brilliant, gentle sort of guy so I can completely understand his desire to keep everything free, open and public, even if that's really not how a capitalist system works.

So for what it's worth, I think that the problem here isn't that Matt is pursuing these two companies, but that his company needs to be simultaneously pursuing every company that's in violation of their trademark. Or, if that's too big a job (in which case the trademark might already be ready to be discarded by the USPTO) then perhaps every firm that's *profiting* from Wordpress.

Thanks for the link, Douglas. Much appreciated.

Oh, and if you're wondering, my arm's all better now, thankfully, and the sling is back in the medicine cabinet!