[hnlmorg]

The issue is by calling it Notepad++, you're now confusing users into thinking it's officially endorsed. Which means complaints, feature requests, bugs, and even any backdoors/malware included in the unofficial version tarnishes the reputation of the official product.

This is why trademarks exist.

[tardedmeme]

So what should you do? Just call it My Awesome Notepad and expect users who are searching for Notepad++ to somehow find it? A name like "John's Notepad++ for Mac" would seem reasonable to me but still isn't compliant with trademark law.

[Cieric]

An example give by donho is "SomeProject : a macOS port of Notepad++" so it seems like the name can be used which will make it appear in searches. It just has to be clearly something else.

[tardedmeme]

I think that's still trademark infringement.

[poizan42]

You can tell people what something is, that is nominative use of the trademark. Actually putting it in center of the branding might be infringing, but Don Ho gave their blessing to use that, so that point is moot anyways.

[hnlmorg]

> So what should you do? Just call it My Awesome Notepad and expect users who are searching for Notepad++ to somehow find it?

Yes. Exactly that. You have no entitlement to free publicity based of someone else's hard work growing their own brand.

You could arguably say "Awesome Notepad, a Notepad++ fork" but even here, the trademark holders can demand you to remove the references to their product if they wished. In this specific instance, Given Notepad++ is open source, I suspect the maintainers of Notepad++ might have been okay with this approach. Though it's a little late for that now because the Mac port author has burned any good faith they might have had.

Another option is to gain trust with the Notepad++ maintainers and then request they link to "Awesome Notepad" project site as an endorsed 3rd party port. But again, the Mac port author hasn't taken the right approach to gain any trust there.

So as it stands, "Notepad++ Mac" is intentionally using Notepad++'s trademarks and branding as a way to get publicity quickly. I don't think they're doing it maliciously, but the intent is still dishonest.

[circuit10]

Can you really demand someone not have any references to your product? Surely people are allowed to refer to it to explain their fork's relation to the original, otherwise it would also be illegal to compare your product against competitors in advertising or to review anything

I guess it depends on whether it's likely to confuse people?

[kstrauser]

As we speak, the Mac version's website is peppered with statements like:

> Is Notepad++ available for Mac?

> Yes. Notepad++ is now natively available for macOS as a free download.

That's over the line. This isn't a few tweaks to get it to compile on a Mac, but a wholesale rewrites of big chunks of it. It's a fork of Notepad++, but it's not the Notepad++.

[circuit10]

I was replying to the hypothetical situation in the comment of saying "Awesome Notepad, a Notepad++ fork"

[kstrauser]

Gotcha.

[hnlmorg]

If it’s part of the branding, then yes.

Saying “Awesome Notepad, a Notepad++ fork” as the tagline for a product would then be using Notepad++’s trademark for Awesome Notepads branding.

If it’s just mentioned in the documents then it because a question for the courts to decide if that’s sufficient use in advertising material. And what will likely usually happen is an undisclosed settlement.

But a lot of this depends on how it’s used, how litigious the trademark holder is, and what jurisdiction this is happening in.

[hnlmorg]

This is where trademark law starts to get a little murky and the law will differ from country to country.

[Tepix]

Does it?

[hnlmorg]

Yes. For example: https://claimistry.com/trademark-law-differences-across-coun...