Good News: Javascript Is 30yo Today Sad News: Its Own Name Doesn't...

You have long ago abandoned the JavaScript trademark, and it is causing widespread, unwarranted confusion and disruption.

JavaScript is the world’s most popular programming language, powering websites everywhere. Yet, few of the millions who program in it realize that JavaScript is a trademark you, Oracle, control. The disconnect is glaring: JavaScript has become a general-purpose term used by countless individuals and companies, independent of any Oracle product.

Oracle’s hold on the JavaScript trademark clearly fits the legal definition of trademark abandonment. A previous blog post addressed this issue, requesting that you, Oracle, release the trademark. Unsurprisingly, the request was met with silence. It is therefore time to take active steps in order to bring the JavaScript trademark into the public domain, where it belongs.

Title 15 of the United States Code, section 1127, states:

A mark shall be deemed to be “abandoned” if either of the following occurs:

The JavaScript trademark is currently held by Oracle America, Inc. (US Serial Number: 75026640, US Registration Number: 2416017). How did this come to be?

In 1995, Netscape partnered with Sun Microsystems to create interactive websites. Brendan Eich famously spent only 10 days creating the first version of JavaScript, a dynamic programming language with a rough syntactic lineage from Sun’s Java language. As a result of this partnership, Sun held the JavaScript trademark. In 2009, Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems and the JavaScript trademark as a result.

The trademark is simply a relic of this acquisition. Neither Sun nor Oracle has ever built a product using the mark. Legal staff, year after year, have renewed the trademark without question. It’s likely that only a few within Oracle even know they possess the JavaScript trademark, and even if they do, they likely don’t understand the frustration it causes within the developer community.

Oracle has abandoned the JavaScript trademark through nonuse.

Oracle has never seriously offered a product called JavaScript. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Netscape Navigator, which supported JavaScript as a browser feature, was a key player. However, Netscape’s usage and influence faded by 2003, and the browser saw its final release in 2008. JavaScript, meanwhile, evolved into a widely used, independent programming language, embedded in multiple browsers, entirely separate from Oracle.

Source: HackerNews