Significant for being one of very few blockchains out there to acquire a trademark, BitShares is once again pioneering. As of 2020, key BitShares community members and BTS core token holders have an interest to setup building blocks that can elevate the legal and regulator-friendly status of BitShares. This extends significantly to marketing efforts and consolidated branding.
BTS Core Token Holders and community should have reason to celebrate, BitShares now has an internationally recognizable trademark in Europe (EUTM by EUIPO) -- achieved through the non-profit entity "Move Institute" (Zavod Premik) based in Slovenia.
Slovenia being one of the pioneers with crypto-friendly laws and regulation, makes it a great location for anyone building on BitShares or any other blockchain and cryptocurrency technology.
The 'Battle for the BitShares trademark' goes back to 2014.
[USA 2014] - "Invictus Innovations", the pioneering development team behind the MIT licensed source code of the BitShares blockchain performed the application / registration for a US Trademark. Unfortunately, filings were marked abandoned 1 year later.
[EU 2018] - "BANX Trading" who had no ties or recognition with Consensus / Community decided to download the logo and submit filling to EUTM for 'figurative' / logo trademark and actually get it published / registered since nobody reacted on time (creation opposition filling against trademark submission).
As BitShares Community have the original design and proper channels to contact original author from 2014, and "BANX Trading" is an unknown entity, this may be seen as intentional miss-representation of the brand (legally defined as "bad-faith trademark application" . The current trademark owners could be located and the transfer of the trademark for the logo is in the final stages.
[EU 2020] - "Move Institute" (legal owner of bitshares.org) following the formal process of submission on September 12th 2019 with EUIPO lasting 4 months, on Jan 9th 2020 without a single opposition BitShares 'word' trademark has been published/registered few days later under formal EU law (January 17th 2020).
Now EUTM filling being complete, the next step would be Worldwide trademark submission in February 2020.
BitShares is a decentralized platform and technology - however this doesn't work in the case of branding and marketing. Someone said once - "Some centralization is required". The intention is to consolidate the brand and representation of BitShares to the world in best possible way.
For convenience, here are the brief descriptions of each of the 'Nice classes' which encompass a vast array of functions and services therefore permitted to operate under the registered trademark:
Class 36: Insurance and Financial Services
- Insurance; financial affairs; monetary affairs; real estate affairs.
Class 38: Communication Services
- Services allowing people to communicate with another by a sensory means.
Class 42: Computer and Software Services and Scientific Services
- Scientific and technological services and research and design relating thereto; industrial analysis and research services; design and development of computer hardware and software.
You should also refer to the complete listings within the BitShares trademark registration page on the EUIPO website. There are many more sub-categories we didn't list here.
With this registration now enacted, it will finally be possible for BitShares to hold "official" and verified accounts on social media or other outlets. Along with this, BitShares is able to enact in jurisdiction on social media toward unofficial accounts. Many accounts have zero consensus from community to use the name.
A trademark makes way for one official account or page for each social or other media outlet. Ran and owned by the BitShares Blockchain, for the community by consensus.
Disclaimer: Community members are still free to mention and promote BitShares as much as they want on personal social media, just not using it as part of business name or name/account without explicit written permission.
All submissions/requests can be sent to [email protected]
You can view the full filing/registration information here: http://euipo.europa.eu/eSearch/#details/trademarks/018124214
