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I can’t imagine being a first time bootstrapped founder running a business without a trademark and not knowing that someone with bad faith would just register a trademark and just sue or order you to change your name.

These are the things that most startups account for when raising capital.

1 comments

The community probably would have complained if they registered the trademark preemptively. But if they let the bad guys register it and then save the day it's the least bad solution.

The timeline just seems like two different brands wanted the name. atSign was using atProtocol as their thing. And trademarks are defend-or-lose. That AT Proto would grow so much more than atSign is just a thing we know now. They were both contemporaneous and it doesn't seem to have been some kind of gazumping operation so much as two groups landing on a name.

Yeah, the much more common scenario with startups is exactly what happened here:

1. you choose a name for your product, start using it

2. you try registering it as your business starts to materialize

3. "oh shit we weren't the only ones who picked that name"