I wonder if this counts as sufficient defense of the trademark according to the trademark protection laws: if one does not guard a trademark, they run the risk of losing it.
Unfortunately, if you care about trademark or just simple copyright infringement (I haven't checked what license is Notepad++ under), they might need to enlist a lawyer sooner rather than later.
Notepad++ is not registered with the USPTO (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office). Searches around will turn up nothing in the U.S. database. The name is trademarked in France (via INPI, the French patent office), which is why the maintainer has been able to send cease-and-desist notices in recent cases (e.g., the unauthorized “Notepad++ for Mac” site).
In the U.S. its only covered by common-law trademark rights from long use, as there’s no federal registration.
You don't need a trademark registration to send a cease-and-desist... you can just send one.
There's clearly demand for notepad++ on Mac. Refusing to meet users where they are at with a simple port feels like squatting on a trademark. I find myself sympathetic to the Mac porter more than Don Ho.
How is he squatting the trademark when it’s actively being used? Not releasing a version for some platform doesn’t make it squatting in the slightest.
The port just can’t use the trademark. Call it something else.
That's not how any of this works. Trademarks aren't invalidated by someone not liking how you do business.
There's demand for Crystal Pepsi but you can't go make a new soft drink yourself and call it Crystal Pepsi. If you want to say you are Pepsi, you have to be the Pepsi.
What if my Crystal Pepsi is just pepsi mixed with crystals or pepsi made into a crystal? Then it's an accurate description of the product?
Pepsi does not want you corrupting their brand by mixing it with Something-Else and calling it Something-Else-Pepsi.
Accurate description is not at all what the legal issue is about.
Trademarks indicate provenance, they don't describe product characteristics.
the provenance is that it's pepsi mixed with crystals therefore crystal pepsi
just like pepsi bottle crate is a crate for bottles of pepsi
ACKSHUALLY, abandonment is a thing with marks, that's why companies spend money to keep them in minimal use to avoid that, or, like Pepsi, lobby to create "famous" marks.
Neither "Pepsi" nor "Notepad++" are abandoned.
If he were just squatting on a trademark this would be an open and shut case under US Trademark law.
The trademark is still in active use for Notepad++ though. That’s not squatting.
Call it notemac++, tell that its a fork of notepad++.
But you can trivially easily run Notepad++ on Mac using Wine. It works flawlessly. Nobody is keeping anything from anybody.
There is clearly a demand for sports cars being sold for under $10k, so it was ok for me to steal your car and sell it cheap
"Squatting on a trademark" makes no sense. You might as well say that I'm squatting on my name because I'm not allowing other people to sign contracts for me.
You can clone someone's project without pretending to be them. They literally put his bio up. Call it something else, put your own bio up.
> They literally put his bio up.
...crediting him as the author of the original, not the mac port.
without commenting on anything to do with trademarks, in what way is that even slightly pretending to be him? why would they put another, separate bio alongside as the person doing a mac port if they were intending to masquerade as the original author?
I don’t think they are trying to masquerade as the author so much as imply a positive association or endorsement.
If the "author" of this port respected Don Ho enough to credit him in the contributors section of his project, then why didn't he respect Don Ho enough to ask first?
If the "author" of this port respected Don Ho enough to credit him in the contributors section of his project, why doesn't he respect Don Ho enough to comply with the request to take down the violations?
This conflict indicates that the respect was never there, and thus the motivation for the bio was probably credibility laundering.
He did ask first, but Don Ho did not respond.
(Which is his right and no permission to do anything)
Don writes,
> For context: I received an email from Andrey Letov on April 8, 2026, informing me that he had just ported Notepad++ to macOS, and ask for contact, without providing further info.
So no asking to use trademarks beforehand, and no asking Don if it's okay to include him on the contributor page for the violating software.
There is a demand for the functionality, no need to use the name just to push the port.