# Trademark registration

Notes on trademark registration for Sigsum:

  - Purpose: protect users, e.g., we don't want users to mistakenly download
    malicious tooling from zigsum.org.  Such threats can now be combatted.
  - Purpose: defensive, prevents someone else from doing a trademark
    registration that could potentially give us trouble.
  - Scope: "checksum", "signed checksum", and "time" with verbs like
    "publishing", "verifying", and "checking".
  - Scope: class 9 (software) and class 42 (services).

We had some discussion regarding including or excluding class 42.  If we do not
trademark register this, our lawyer explained that someone else could.  This
would be a threat towards our own and others operations of Sigsum services.

The Tor Project has a more [lengthy text][] about trademark registration that
matches our motivation, intent, and goals.

The proposed decision is to go ahead and trademark register based on the above.

[lengthy text]: https://web.archive.org/web/20220530012234/https://www.torproject.org/about/trademark/