Bitcoin Forum

http://esearch.oami.europa.eu/copla/trademark/data/010050466

This is a trademark for a logo plus the term "bit coin". The deadline for objections will expire very soon! Note that the applicant can also use the term alone to proceed against someone. It does not need a logo at all to violate against this trademark, if it becomes valid.

http://esearch.oami.europa.eu/copla/trademark/data/010103646

This is a trademark for the term "bitcoin". Expiry time has not begun yet, because the application is still under examination by the office. But: It was already objected by the owner of the trademark above! Obviously he thinks the term bitcoin is violating his logo + term trademark. If the office agrees, this means that the above trademark can be used to ban all uses of the term Bitcoin.

Craziness.

Um, no, you can't ban uses of any term in day-to-day use. That's like saying you aren't allowed to say "Microsoft" or "Wal-mart" because those are trademarked. Let them trademark it, it's just them wasting money.

From 'Bitcoin' trademark request: http://esearch.oami.europa.eu/copla/trademark/data/010103646

Why is that company name familiar?  Of course: the owners of MtGox.

Someone needs to file an opposition:
http://oami.europa.eu/ows/rw/pages/QPLUS/forms/electronic/fileOpposition.en.do

I'm not paying 700 euro to prevent someone from filing a trademark, but I'd throw a few BTC in if someone else wants to do it.

Just because a company gets a trademark or patent, it doesn't necessarily mean it's worth anything. Anyone who trademarks Bitcoin and tries to prevent 'bitcoincharts.com' or 'spendbitcoins.com' from using it is going to quickly have their trademark made worthless by the courts.

Yes it will be the same situation with Twitter and Tweet. Twitter tried to trademark the keyword tweet even though it was a user created keyword. They tried to take it to court, and lost embarrassingly. Now all the tweet domains have skyrocketed  8).

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10313566-2.html

He should not do all these things under one flag.
Claiming 'bitcoin' makes him and his other projects more vunerable.

LOL..by the time they get the trademark no-one will be mining it anymore.

The coins and the exchanges will be around for a long time.
Tibanne or anyone else should have created a non profit organisation that protects all bitcoin related things.

Or better, we, as a community, should do such a thing. Every bitcoin/wallet user could pay 0.1 bitcoin and with
this money we can protect everything there is, names, images, protocol and also file a worldwide patent.

But not for profit, just to protect.

Is there really any need though? As long as said names, images and protocol are all released under an open-source or royalty free license what does it matter? At this point I'm pretty sure 'prior art' covers most aspects of BTC (the name, the frequently used logos and the protocol) so we really shouldn't have anything to worry about.

I don't like the idea that one company is the owner of the name 'bitcoin'. (don't know what possible future implications can be.)

I would like to see that Bitcoin is the owner of the brand Bitcoin and everything that relates.
I would like to see that every user of a bitcoin-wallet is a (stock)owner of Bitcoin "the company".

We have everything available to make this happen, with GLBSE we could all be shareholder of the non profit Bitcoin organisation.
Why should we wait until a 'for profit' individual/company like Tibanne gets this and maybe sells it all to G or MS or worse...

Very interesting.

I wonder why MTGox is interested in trademark bitcoin in europe.