Social Coop is a company that claims to have acquired three Mastodon servers???

Oh gosh, there is also this about Suji Yan https://www.todayonline.com/world/meet-chinas-fabulous-cross-dressing-computer-coders

Maybe we should file a trademark application. Are we formally incorporated or still just an opencollective instance?

We are not. We have a fiscal sponsor but are otherwise an unincorporated association. I believe we should register as a cooperative society with the FCA. Happy to help with the efforts on this, though possibly the details should be handled by the legal working group or something?

Regarding a trademark application: where do we file it? Unlike copyright, trademarks aren't universal, and it would get pretty expensive to protect the name everywhere.

I do agree with this in principle though.

dang foiled by the fact that there's no way I'm putting my credit card into this webzone to look up more info

I use throw away virtual one time card details for such things. I use Revolut app https://www.revolut.com/ , but there are other options out there too. Indeed, I think even Open Collective offer virtual cards for some collectives (I think at present just the collectives they host), powered by privacy.com last I read about it (but I think planning to connect with other providers too).

I think getting a trademark is a good idea, and I'd even suggest a trusted member could do it so sooner rather then later under their own name, then transfer it to a proper legal entity once we've cobbled one together.

To @Sven Shipton's point, I think it's probably wise to at least cover a couple jurisdictions where we have a sizable number of users, or hope to have users. The main risk, imo, is they stand-up a Mastodon server that is similar enough to social.coop that it confuses users who think they're joining our instance, whether that's intentional or not. If those users are in a location we have TM, it seems like it would lower that particular risk, but (obligatory) I am not a lawyer.

Sadly, I've known others in the FOSS community who've been forced to deal w/ TM issues. This is one resource I've found helpful in the past:

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/likelihood-confusion-how-do-you-determine-trademark-infringing.html

I know the folks behind Social Coop and they have agreed to stop using the name. (Also in this thread is a record that I have discussed Social.coop with them in the past.)