On their website ( http://www.young-targets.com/free-licences/ ) they claim: "There will be no license fees for the use of the trademark “hackathon” for non-commercial purposes in Germany. ... There will no wave of lawcease-and-desist letters rolling through Germany."
Yet looking at the details of the doctape hackathon, it's a free event with free food for the participants. You could argue that it might have some commercial character since participants are expected (mind you, not forced, only expected) to hack up something doctape-related. However i'm fairly sure this does not fall under the definition of a commercial event.
With this Lutz and his friends have tipped the card and made clear their intentions of simple extortion.
So it's all about the 2500 € licensing fee. That didn't take long, the ink on the Trademark registration is barely dry. Trademarking a common term and then extorting licensing fees is a disgusting business practice, but I can see how they'll get away with it since "Hackathons" are such a niche thing.
As I said in the thread where the registration was discovered, it's a real shame nobody discovered this during the (long) period where we could still have filed an objection to the Trademark. Now it's too late.
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.
There's absolutely nothing that still could be called "honest" about what Lutz is doing here. He already contradicted several of his prior statements, or "lame excuses", in regards to his plans with the registration of the trademark.
So a company extorting money from anyone who uses a common phrase to organize a certain type of event is what you perceive as being a "gatekeeper for the use of the term and protect it from corporate interest"? In what kind of backwards universe does that even make sense?
I think I was not clear enough: I too believe that registering the term as a trademark does no good to the developer community. But I don't think that the reasons behind this have to be some kind of extortion scheme, or that the reasoning for the trademark (http://www.young-targets.com/free-licences/) have to be completely made up. I would like to see the trademark go away, I just don't like how quickly accusations came up.
>Are you by any chance working for them or an affiliate company?
> But I don't think that the reasons behind this have to be some kind of extortion scheme
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.
They don't even have any plans for how they will distribute the money they get, and their actions contradict their own statements. I'm unclear how anything about this could be seen as honest.
Yet looking at the details of the doctape hackathon, it's a free event with free food for the participants. You could argue that it might have some commercial character since participants are expected (mind you, not forced, only expected) to hack up something doctape-related. However i'm fairly sure this does not fall under the definition of a commercial event.
With this Lutz and his friends have tipped the card and made clear their intentions of simple extortion.