The key thing here, if PTFS actually means what they say, is that they
should assign the trademark APPLICATION over to HLT.  Otherwise, the
posture is really just trying to convince you not to contest their
receiving the trademark, after which they can do wtf with it.

This is a big deal to anybody that contributes to an OSS project (as I did
with Koha for several years, at LibLime and elsewhere).  Imagine a company
like Rackspace trying to trademark "Apache" for some webserver software
they happen to run and sell services on.  You know, a project that entirely
predates their involvement, has hundreds of previous committers, and has
actually already been called Apache all this time.

Koha predates LibLime.  Its availability and the technical experience of
staff at Athens County PL with Koha are the reasons why LibLime could even
exist.  It wasn't called something else, it wasn't a whitelabel platform or
an unnamed research project, it was Koha.  LibLime contributed massively to
the codebase under GPL... to Koha.

I don't see this in the framing a lot of the stories are giving it, namely
"Large Culturally Insensitive U.S. Corporation vs. Small Friendly NZ
Library".  I see this a fundamental OSS governance issue.  If you can't
keep this kind of appropriation from happening here, then we're all just
one patent/copyright/trademark squatter/troll away from being hijacked.

How is it we can't just cite prior art and be done with it?

--Joe Atzberger