[scotty79]

First, is there a single event in history where multimillion dollar trademark lost the protection that was paid for because there existed open-source hobby project with the same name?

Secondly, are you seriously comparing a game that had 10 installments or so and sold in millions of copies with somebody's fan hobby project?

Could reasonable person confuse the two? Could reasonable person claim that one is substitute for the other?

Also "bottom line" suggests that Blizzard could be harmed financially which is preposterous.

[dragonwriter]

> First, is there a single event in history where multimillion dollar trademark lost the protection that was paid for because there existed open-source hobby project with the same name?

No, because loss of trademarks from non-enforcement was well-established risk before "open source software" was a thing, so no trademark owner that cares fails to police against open source hobby projects with the same name in the same market.

[zamalek]

Some valid points, however:

> Could reasonable person confuse the two? Could reasonable person claim that one is substitute for the other?

If not a "No True Scotsman" argument, that's a personal attack. I am a reasonable pragmatist that is very-much in touch with reality and reality often sucks. If I'm proven wrong; I would be overjoyed. I just really can't see any benefit for an open source project (with no legal resources) taking a risk like this.

Posting to HN and Reddit with "HTML5 Starcraft" in the title is one thing (and conveys the same message), actually including Starcraft in the project name is a completely unnecessary risk. There is evidence to support that statement: Nostalrius and WOW emulation in general. Blizzard went after multiple WOW emulation projects (e.g. MongOS and WGrid) even though they claimed to be "an educational project for MMO servers." MongOS did nothing more than provide a black-box-replicated data set for the WOW client and protocol-level compatibility with WOW (also black-box-replicated): there was no copyright or trademark infringement and they still found themselves in trouble.

Open source has poked this legal wasp nest multiple times and has been stung by that every time. Is there any evidence in support of Blizzard just standing by and letting things slide?

[scotty79]

>> reasonable person

> that's a personal attack.

How's that a personal attack?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person

[zamalek]

> How's that a personal attack?

Context:

> Secondly, are you seriously comparing a game that had 10 installments or so and sold in millions of copies with somebody's fan hobby project?

> Could reasonable person confuse the two? Could reasonable person claim that one is substitute for the other?

Emphasis mine. This discussion is now devolving into adhod and moving targets. All I did was present facts and evidence. I'm very much done here.

[scotty79]

When writing reasonable person, I mean legal term that I linked. I'm aware that corporate lawyers are writing strongly worded letters to common folk. I'd just want to see them convince the court that reasonable person would think common people efforts affect them in any way.