Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-20644-20141110180435/@comment-25389429-20141121045622

My .02:

Lady Lostris wrote: Also, depending on the language, the distinction between "Wikia the company" and "wikia the single community" is nonexistent, as some languages grammatically capitalize the words (like German), so wikia will always be capitalized, making it very difficult and confusing to know to which "Wikia" someone is referring.

German doesn't have that much of a problem with non-capitalized brand or company names anymore (posting from the premises of a pawisda systems GmbH right now). However, not even Germans can express capitalization in speech.

Brandon Rhea wrote: "Check out my Twitter" This idea may be new-ish to Wikia, but it's not unique to websites and tech companies.

Can you "twitter" anywhere else but on Twitter? No.

Can you have a wiki hosted someplace else than Wikia? Yes.

Can a community get the idea that their wiki, started on Wikia and named the "Something-Something Wikia" as explicitly encouraged by Wikia, should migrate to another platform ''and take the established name with it? Yes! ''

(Do Wikias terms+conditions allow them to do that? Maybe not. Will that prevent them from trying? I don't think so. Soured mood ahead.)

I've been told (IANAL) that specifically U.S. legalese requires you to actively defend your trademarks against use by others if you don't want to see them pronounced null and void. There is Hormel as an example of successfully differentiating between a majuscule-only trademark and an all-lowercase "free" term, but .......