FreeGameDev

Hi all.

I am currently working on a pet project of mine. This project is not necessarily a "business", but it does have a name. I am working on a Kickstarter campaign and website for it right now. I was wondering how exactly do I go about making sure someone else doesn't decide to register a Trademark using my name and force me to stop using it? Like take SuperTux for example, they (as far as I know) are not a registered Trademark, so how do they keep their name "secure"?

Is there a way to post on my website a notice like "everything on this website is licensed under the "CC BY" including our organization's name? Would the "CC BY" protect me from someone else registering my organizations name as their Trademark?

Thanks!

P.S my organization will be creating an open source game to complement our project, so I feel this is an appropriate place to post this.

No, the CC BY would not provide Trademark protection.

Trademarks are a funny thing and really quite expensive. It costs £170 to register a trademark in the UK, and I'm doubting that has International protection. It's basically a way for Corporations to protect brands from exploitation. Can you imagine if Microsoft had created 'MS Google' as a response to Google becoming a popular search engine? The landscape as we know it could have been totally changed because MS basically stole the brand.

I would not worry too much about it unless you are looking at becoming a fairly serious game development company dependent upon the significant revenues from your project(s). Oh, IANAL so take my advise with whatever pinch of Internet salt you deem necessary.

Unregistered trademarks are a thing; they're just not as strong as registered trademarks, understandably. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unregistered_trademark

Using a generic or descripive name should be pretty safe.

Like calling a text editor a Text Editor...

PS:
There might be exceptions for already established products with generic names. But those are pretty rare I think.
IANAL

Thanks for the info everyone!