License agreement for using the term "Hackathon"

On their website ( <a href="http://www.young-targets.com/free-licences/" rel="nofollow">http://www.young-targets.com/free-licences/</a> ) 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."<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Someone will have to try and fight this in court.

They just updated their page with a note stating that they will delete the trademark: <a href="http://www.young-targets.com/free-licences/" rel="nofollow">http://www.young-targets.com/free-licences/</a>

Just refer them to the reply of the case Arkell v. Pressdram in 1971.<p><a href="http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/arkell.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/arkell.htm</a>