I think this is a honest attempt at creating a gatekeeper for the use of the term and protect it from corporate interest. I also believe that the example of the doctape hackathon shows how this attempt does not work very well.
In the original thread about the Hackathon trademark you advertised for Nachtausgabe's IT recruitment "branch": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5650052
Are you by any chance working for them or an affiliate company?
>Are you by any chance working for them or an affiliate company?
No.
Well, that is what is actually happening out there as we speak, so there is really no room for interpretation here. It's clear what their scheme is and they implemented it as quickly as they possibly could.
> I would like to see the trademark go away, I just don't like how quickly accusations came up.
That licensing extortion letter looked pretty genuine to me, so I don't think this falls under the definition of mere accusations anymore. Once again, it's what's actually happening. They were accusations when the first thread about the trademark started, but now there is actual hard evidence that our assumptions were in fact correct. And just to be sure, it would not have made any sense for that company to register the trademark if they did not have a plan exactly like this. So it's not really a surprise either.
> No.
So there is absolutely no connection? I apologize if this is true and I'm being overly cynical.