So some time ago a lawyer that liked this project offered to file a Meshtastic® trademark (for free). So I said yes. I just got the notice from the USPTO that the trademark was granted. So in the interest of trying to always be 100% transparent with this project, I thought I’d announce that.
The trademark is assigned to the LLC I use for all my open-source projects and there is no plan to make any money from this ;-). But it seemed like a wise thing to do. Various people have pinged me over the last year about making devices that run meshtastic and my answer has always been the same:
I think making a device would be great and I’m happy to help with software support for it (because it helps the project). As long as you obey the GPL I think you putting Meshtastic® code on it is great.
There is currently no need to pay to use the Meshtastic® trademark if you are making a device. Someday (no sooner than 1 or 2 yrs from now … if this project really takes off) we might actually make a little org and work out some sort of “if you want to be blessed as an official Meshtastic sponsor (and use our trademark) you’ll need to kick in $1/unit to TBD org.” Then we’d somehow divy up that money to devs based on % contribution, or server costs or whatever…