On Jun 10, 2008, at 1:35 PM, Trent Nelson wrote:
AFAIK if someone infringes you're trademark you are obliged to enforce your trademark or lose it, the afore mentioned two people Glyph is not happy with who are using the word 'Twisted' would need to receive a C&D off the bat. Does Twisted Labs have the resources to put into maintaining their trademark?
I found almost the exact opposite to what you're stating here when I looked into acquiring trademarks for some company stuff a while back. You're not obliged to do anything; it simply provides you with a legal grounding if you wish to challenge a party that you believe has infringed upon your trademark (assuming it's to your detriment; you wouldn't pursue a 'Twisted Fruits', a company down the street that brands their produce with a big 'Twisted' sticker).
It's up to you to enforce your trademark, there's no governing body that does it; such a body only comes in to play to arbitrate disputes. I've never heard of an obligation to enforce your trademark "or lose it" as you put it.
IANAL, but I did read a lot about this on slashdot ;-)... When such a dispute occurs, you have to prove that you've been performing due diligence in protecting your trademark. I don't think it's necessary to send the aforementioned projects C&Ds quite yet, but they should be contacted and told of our intentions to protect the Twisted trademark. IIRC, this is to prevent people from registering everything they can think of, and then suing the next person to use that mark. It would be nice if we had something like that for patents... -phil