Silly question: how are people negatively impacted by the trademark of "JavaScript"?
Because in practice, isn't this a bit like "Kleenex" - where everyone knows you mean "tissue" (EMCAScript).
It's less the fact that someone owns JS's trademark, and more that it's specifically Oracle (they got it when they bought Sun).
Oracle is an incredibly litigious company. Their awful reputation in this respect means that the JS ecosystem can never be sure they won't swoop in and attempt to demand rent someday. This is made worse by the army of lawyers they employ; even if they're completely in the wrong, whatever project they go after probably won't be able to afford a defense.
That's why courts don't take hypothetical cases. Someone has to be injured to demonstrate actual harm.
Are there any examples of Oracle using their JavaScript trademark to sue anyone? If they did, that petition would have merit.
Unless Demo was, this feels like a marketing project. And it's working, too, so kudos.
The other aspect here is that general knowledge (citation needed) says that if a company doesn't actively defend their trademark, they often won't be able to keep it if challenged in court. Or perhaps general knowledge is wrong.
At this point I'm going to assume that adding -Script to a trademarked name allows me to use that name freely.
JavaScriptScript?
Oracl3Script?
Assuming Oracle did decide to go down that route, who would they sue? No one really uses the JavaScript name in anything official except for "JavaScriptCore" that Apple ships with Webkit.
> who would they sue
Anyone they feel like. Lawnmower gonna mow.
Afaik they already sued Deno: https://deno.com/blog/deno-v-oracle2
Edit: Seems I'm incorrect, see below
The incredibly litigious company here is Deno. Deno sued on a whim, realized they were massively unprepared, then asked the public to fund a legal campaign that will benefit Deno themselves, a for-profit, VC-backed company.
This personal vendetta will likely end with the community unable to use the term JavaScript. Nobody should support this.
Your comment seems incredibly confused.
1. Oracle is the litigious one here. My favorite example is that time they attacked a professor for publishing less-than-glowing benchmarks of their database: https://danluu.com/anon-benchmark/ What's to stop them from suing anyone using the term JavaScript in a way that isn't blessed by them? That's what Deno is trying to protect against.
2. Deno is filing a petition to cancel the trademark, not claim it themselves. This would return it to the public commons.
It should be obvious from these two facts that any member of the public that uses JavaScript should support this, regardless of what they think of Deno-the-company.
> This personal vendetta will likely end with the community unable to use the term JavaScript. Nobody should support this.
Why would that be the case, if not for Oracle's litigiousness?
Hi Larry Ellison! Will you mow my lawn?
The fact that you wrote it wrong is hilariously ironic.
JavaScript is simply the better term, and marketing is everything. Reminds me of Java's POJOs, which was a very simple pattern that no one used, until someone gave them a fancy name.
ECMAScript is a horrible technical name. Might as well call it ACMEScript considering how willie e. coyote it feels to develop with it...
ACME is actually better, because you can say or read it in under 5 business days.
POJO is one of my favorite acronyms. Along with POTS and COTS.
POTS = Plain Old Telephony System COTS = Commercial Off-The-Shelf
> POTS = Plain Old Telephony System I worked for NY Telephone for years in the '80s, and it was referred to there as "Plain Old Telephone Service" not System. Not that it's a big deal at this point!
it sounds like eczema - naming your programming language after a skin condition is not a great choice
nothing against people with eczema of course
> Might as well call it ACMEScript considering how willie e. coyote it feels to develop with it...
And it would feel just the same if it was named something else.
It's just a name, who gives a damn?
> It's just a name, who gives a damn?
This is extremely ironic given that JavaScript was so named because people do give a damn about names so Netscape/Sun leveraged the Java success to push JS, hence they named it JAVAscript despite it having nothing to do with Java.
> Because in practice, isn't this a bit like "Kleenex"
Maybe. That's what the challenge intends to find out.
EMCA -> ECMA
Europe-Canada-Mexico Agreement?
True. And that's also a reason why "Javascript" is more human friendly tbh.
One reason it's less friendly is that lots people think it has anything to do with java.
They now have GoFundMe where they are soliciting donations for a discovery phase of a <strike>patent</strike> trademark cancellation request.
They have just 50k USD out of 200k USD they are raising. (No idea if that's appropriate; from the outside, it seems like a lot of money, but also they are fighting Oracle which has unlimited money, so, yeah)
For some reason it's not linked in the page itself.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-challenge-oracles-javascr...
Not to nit-pic, but it's a Trademark cancellation - not a patent. The confusion probably came from the fact it's before the US Patent and Trademark Office.
Wouldn't Oracle's use of the Java trademark be problematic in a trademark cancellation request? We're talking about two very similar names for identical product types (i.e. programming languages). Indeed the similarity was originally intended to imply an association. I wouldn't be surprised if Oracle's sole interest in the trademark is due to its similarity and history.
Oracle's sole interest is extracting money from its assets through whatever tactics are most effective, regardless of technical merit (not specific to JavaScript I guess though)
[flagged]
> You can't beat City Hall
This broadcast was brought to you by the Better Things Arenāt Possible Party
Because trying to do the impossible has gone down so well in history and politics.
Stop spreading defeatism. Either channel these energies into something better, or just get out of the way.
"Defeatism" is yet another shibboleth for people who refuse to accept reality. Wasting your money on things you can't change when you could be spending it on things you can is true "defeatism", as it accomplishes nothing.
Powerful orgs have powerful enemies. There are many people who want to see Oracle out of the way. Theyāre not more powerful than the rest of the industry put together.
I actually think that people should rather use EcmaScript name instead of JavaScript, because it's a way better name (much less confusing, given that this lang doesn't have anything to do with Java anyway). I wish Oracle started suing people to force everyone to use the better name.
> because it's a way better name (much less confusing, given that this lang doesn't have anything to do with Java anyway).
Probably if we were in the early 2000s this could have been a battle worth fighting. But considering we're in 2025 and probably more people are aware of JavaScript than Java at this point, even when you're deep in enterprise-land, I'm not sure it'd be less confusing.
Anyways, you're about two decades too late to this discussion :/
Yeah, I agree with you. I remember being annoyed by the name in 1999 because, as you say, JavaScripts's not got much to do with Java other than both languages being superficially C-like... but I don't see it as being confusing for more time than it takes to read introductory tutorials for each language.
There are more important battles to fight.
From days of old...
Invoking Applet Methods From JavaScript Code - https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/applet/in...
and
Invoking JavaScript Code From an Applet - https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/applet/in...
Aside from the "Java is cool, name everything Java" in the early days - there was scripting between the browser and the applet using a language named JavaScript.
I actually used this back in the day: once at university, and then again for a telecoms project in my first job.
But it doesn't mean there's much commonality - beyond superficially C-like syntax - between the languages, and certainly not between their "standard libraries" (aka the browser APIs in JavaScript's case).
Eh, JavaScript wasn't the originally chosen name, it was LiveScript by Eich. I've never seen a justification for the name from anyone in the know, other than Eich's musing that Netscape wanted the "cool" factor. That "cool" factor was also why the original task of embedding scheme into the browser turned into a more C/Java-esque flavor.
> probably more people are aware of JavaScript than Java at this point
All the same, I probably get as many calls from recruiters to fill Java positions as I do JS positions. I've never used the former, and explaining it is always awkward!
I would tell them they are wasting your time by not offering you fitting jobs. It's on them to know what they are looking for, not on you
To be frank this is a service to you. No company you want to work at has a recruiter that doesn't understand the difference (a fully AI recruiter would be better than this experience).
For normal people Java is a short way to say JavaScript.
I am going to sound crazy, but, if Microsoft would free up TypeScript and every browser added native TypeScript features to JavaScriptā¦ and then we all just started calling it TypeScript. Maybe? Then you would see native ts files. Oracle will never give up JS. The funny thing is the number of people who confuse Java and JS.
For years we said bring something sane to browsers instead of trying to salvage js. At this point, though, why don't they just implement DOM bindings in wasm and make internets a better place overnight?
TypeScript is a really decent language though, I wouldn't feel happier or more productive using Fortran or whatever. Its type system is actually really powerful which is what matters when it comes to avoiding bugs, and it's easy to write functional code with correct-by-construction data. If you need some super optimized code then sure that's what WASM is for but that's not the problem with most web apps, the usual problem is bad design, but then choice of language doesn't save you. Sure TS has some annoying legacy stuff from JS but every language has cruft, and with strict linting you can eliminate it.
It's also better if there's one ecosystem instead of one fragmented with different languages where you have to write bindings for everything you want to use.
I love WASM, I do appreciate that it is slowly but reasonably growing into its final destination.
Native type annotations in ecmascript is a serious proposal that gained some traction for quite a while but seems to have fallen off
From experience, corporations usually don't give the general public any trademarked name. I assume TypeScript is trademarked right now; and I doubt Microsoft would ever liberate this. So in this regard, the corporations act in the same manner - selfish.
TFA says Microsoft offered the JScript trademark to be used in place of JavaScript, so thereās some indication of willingness to give up a trademark.
If browser makers offered to put it in the browser if the name is freed, I bet they could be convinced. The main problem right now, is that there isn't a major push to add TS to the browser.
If you can find the clip on you tube where he says it, it's even funnier. But sadly also true.
> The funny thing is the number of people who confuse Java and JS.
Is it? My experience in the past decade is that there are more memes about people who confuse the 2 than people that confuse the 2.
EcmaScript is an awful name. It sounds too similar to eczema or ectoplasm. Ugly name.
I don't know, I kind of like the name EctoScript. Although if it were me I'd just rename it WebScript and be done with it.
Obligatory: https://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-...
> 1995 - Brendan Eich reads up on every mistake ever made in designing a programming language, invents a few more, and creates LiveScript. Later, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of Java the language is renamed JavaScript. Later still, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of skin diseases the language is renamed ECMAScript.
Nailed it. My brain always hears it as eczema script, which is never a good association.
Agreed. WebScript would be better.
Filename extension is .js, mime type is text/javascript, millions of people call it javascript. I don't see this changing anytime soon
Unrelated but, the JavaScript capitalization is so odd
Everything seemed to be Pascal case back then.
The last time this was brought up, "WebScript" was mentioned as a possible alternative name. (Like WebAssembly, WebSockets, WebRTC, etc.)
My personal favourite is "JayScript".
DoobieScript
WebScript seems like it would really work. Especially if it was introduced at the same time as a major update to the ECMAscript spec
Don't anthropomorphise the lawnmower.
The context:
> Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle. ā Brian Cantrill (https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=33m1s)
Came here for this. Was not disappoint.
1) Put JS in maintenance mode, donāt add any language features, only runtime
2) TS becomes the official mainline, whoever doesnāt like types can just keep writing as they did before, because valid JS is valid TS
Problem solved, itās not that difficult.
TS trademark is owned by Microsoft.
That would be a case of out of the frying pan into the fire. Not really better.
Call it ES2026 officially and let other people devalue MS' trademark as they refer to that (and later versions) as TS.
...and we'll have another API warfa^H^H^H^H lawsuit that we had for Java.
Same as Go and Google then. Is the ownership of the trademark of the name/logo of a FOSS language really that big a deal?
That's the entire issue here: JS is a FOSS language and they don't like that Oracle owns the trademark.
ah yes, the regressive approach
3) remove js and its derivatives from the internet, switch to lua or smth
OT, but I learned Lua this year in order to be able to write a mod for a game, and maybe this is due to it being a while since I last used a dynamic language regularly, but Lua really feels like it's basically what JavaScript was intended to be. Both use a map-like data structure for basically everything, with integer keys to make them act like arrays, function values to make them act as objects, but Lua using an explicit function call in `for ... in` loops avoided needing a separate construct to be added later on for iterating over arrays in order (or having to resort to manually iterating over the numbers rather than the array itself). Lua's module system reminds me a lot of how Node's `exports` works (although nowadays I understand there are other ways of importing/exporting stuff in JavaScript), and it's not obvious to me that the power of prototypes in JavaScript are worth the extra complexity over using the module system for the pre-ES6 model of OO that JavaScript used. I feel like Lua basically already has solved most of the stuff that JS has needed to add a lot of new features for in recent years. I imagine this is something that a lot of people were already aware of, but at least personally, even being cognizant of the flaws that JS had been trying to fix, I hadn't realized an already well-established language had a design that solved most of them without also having a lot of additional scope beyond what JS was trying to do (e.g. Python having full-fledged class-based OO) or at least superficially looking a lot different (e.g. some form of lisp, which I know had been at least talked about in the early web days as a potential option but might have faced more of an uphill battle for adoption).
Should be easy, itās not like thereās any legacy code out there written in JS.
Yes, because that's a pragmatic and realistic solution.
Why is this worth doing? What wrong with the status quo? The author does not give any examples of Oracle threatening people for using the JavaScript (tm) name.
They have linked to an example from one of the blog posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/14vnipl/rust_f...
The example is indeed two years old. I also couldn't find any point in the article that explains why this is worth doing.
But it's a valid example, isn't it?
Someone just wanted to share their Rust + JavaScript knowledge with people, and they got a cease and desist. It's clearly not ideal.
The problem is FUD. Some guy at a company gets told he has to wait for legal to approve some open source project or initiative that happens to use JS in the name, because his boss heard thereās a trademark issue, and the enthusiasm fades and the idea gets sidelined. Thereās probably been thousands of tiny little instances of FUD like that, which weād never hear about, and which have led to good things not happening.
One clear instance of FUD we do know about is the spec itself is not titled with the name of the language it specifies, which is then its own source of confusion for newcomers trying to learn the web platform, and makes it harder for old timers to explain things, and is generally annoying. Complexity. Confusion. Doubt. Inaction.
Removing legal FUD from the world is a good cause. I donāt mind if it also works as a good marketing play for Deno.
This! I dont think people realize how many people fold like this. Almost nothing actually gets litigated. Litigation is a huge risk and very expensive. The profit incentive at companies means this fight is almost never worth it and its just easier to fold and use a competitor's technology.
I think it's mostly a marketing play by Deno.
Should have [2024]. The "postmark" says Sep 16, 2024.
And the list of updates at the top says they've since filed a petition to dismiss the trademark, and Oracle has filed to dismiss the petition.
The petition was partially dismissed and Deno was given leave to amend their petition (but no amended petition has yet been filed, that I can see). There was some initial worthless discovery and now a protective order has been granted allowing Oracle to file information they don't want out in public (e.g. trade secrets). That was at the beginning of November 2025 and the case is ongoing.
https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=92086835&pty=CAN&eno...
I think it is posted because of the update on Dec 2nd 2025 where Oracle responded with a request to dismiss.
Edit: I read that date shockingly wrong, their response was February of 2025 so this is pretty old.
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