Groupon & GNOME: Doing the Right Thing

So Tuesday morning, the Internet was abuzz. Groupon has a tablet based point of sale “operating system for merchants to run their entire operation” called Gnome, which is accompanied by 28 – count ’em 28 – trademark applications. With trademark not being the same as copyright, trademarks are constantly defended by owners because, well, that’s the way the system works (or doesn’t, depending on your perspective), and GNOME was in a position of having to spend a significant amount in defending its trademark, used for the last 17 years and officially trademarked in 2006.