Isn't this an unfortunate aspect of trademark law? As the owner if it is shown that you do not make an effort to go after unauthorized use than a more unscrupulous trademark thief could then steal your trademark and win in court?
In general, companies can just enforce it as they see fit, but nothing forces them to do so.
Quotes from the article:
> That matters because Canonical’s actions reflect a much bigger problem: a pervasive and unfounded belief that if you don’t police every unauthorized use of a trademark you are in danger of losing it.
> The circumstances under which a company could actually lose a trademark—such as abandonment and genericide—are quite limited.
It could be argued that "Raspberry Pi" might be more at risk of a genericide than "Ubuntu", but we are still far from it, and I am not even sure enforcing their copyright would help in that case.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/trademark-rules/
Though these rules are a bit wordy and sound legalese rather than guidelines.
It might have been easier if the Pi foundation was named differently, but I understand their position, though IMO a disclaimer that this is an unofficial website (as if the -spy didn't give it away) should be enough.
From an article by the EFF:
> The circumstances under which a company could actually lose a trademark—such as abandonment and genericide—are quite limited. Genericide […] is very rare […]. Courts also set a very high bar to show abandonment (usually years of total non-use). Importantly, failure to enforce a mark against every potential infringer does not show abandonment.
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not...
Pay your renewal fee.
AFAIK, corrections more than welcome, there is no legal basis for this idea that you can lose a trademark by not challenging an infringer. You can certainly lose damages: you can't wait until someone built a £million business and then say 'oops, now we take your money'.
If it were true then after 8 years RaspberryPi would have lost their mark, surely.
Not legal advice. Personal comment in no way relating to my employment.