alt Hacker NewsI think this is hugely misunderstood, though. You have to defend your trademark, but it's still within your rights to grant someone permission to use it.
The Notepad++ guy wasn't an attack dog here. I'm 100% behind his reasonable position. Just saying, you're not legally obligated to say "no, no one else in the entire world can use it". It's more that you have to say "no one else can use it without my permission." Also just saying, if you want to use someone else's trademark, it's a really, really bad idea to start the conversation by using it without their permission and thereby requiring them to decide right then and there whether they'll allow you to. It's kind of like asking to borrow someone's car versus taking it first and then asking if that was OK.
> I think this is hugely misunderstood, though. You have to defend your trademark, but it's still within your rights to grant someone permission to use it.
I think it's a case of where a lot of people don't have experience with trademark licensing.
Back in the 90s I worked for a small company that was in various "partner" programs with hardware and software companies (Microsoft, Intel, Citrix, etc). Each "partnership" agreement came with trademark licensing documentation and very, very specific usage requirements for using the trademarked name, logos, etc. With at least one of the companies we had to get ad copy approved for compliance with our license.