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Comment by aresant | Hacker News Reader

Site is well put together - nice job!

BUT a word of caution:

I would expect that you'll receive a letter from StackOverflow's legal counsel regarding trademark violation for your domain name - rename now before you get enough traction to matter . . .

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Nope there's no infringement issues, they're using stack overflow's software with some extra bells and whistles to allow inline latex equations

The software is fine, but I wonder about the name Math Overflow. “Overflow" doesn’t seem particularly to have anything to do with the name math or with answering questions, so it seems it is only referencing Stack Overflow. Therefore, Stack Overflow might be worried about people confusing Math Overflow with Stack Overflow, and might want MO to change their name.

The founder of MO was on the SO podcast last week ( http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/03/podcast-86/ ), and they didn't seem to have any problem with it. They're pretty easy-going. That said, SO is trying to get VC funding, and their investors may not be so charitable.

Given that MO is a customer via their 'stack-exchange' program (http://stackexchange.com/) I don't see that as becoming a problem.

Yeah, I doubt it will be an issue legal-wise, but that is a pretty terrible domain name. First the overflow bit and then the .net, just doesn't make sense.

I thought there was something with trademark laws that meant owners had to actively protect their marks or risk losing the ability to pursue legal action against infringement. So even though SO and MO are buddy-buddy, couldn't allowing MO to use their name as is theoretically jeopardize SO's trademark?

I agree, the name isn't meaningful in a mathematics sense the same way SO's name is to computer science. Is there an equivalent to be found? I can't think of any particularly disastrous mathematics errors or situations. Division by zero.... Division by infinity?

Its a latex pun (about a very annoying error). If you've ever written a math paper with long equations you instantly get it..

It's not a problem -- to infringe, the name has to be similar enough to confuse the public, and it has to be in the same market.

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