Deno has started a GoFundMe campaign to raise $200k to help support its formal Cancellation Petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to get "JavaScript" converted from a trademark to public domain. 

The company, whose CEO Ryan Dahl is the author of node.js as well as of Deno, has been fighting to get JavaScript released from being an Oracle trademark, and the battle has now reached the discovery phase. More than 27,000 people signed Deno's open letter to Oracle about the JavaScript trademark. 

If Deno wins, the term "JavaScript" becomes public domain – free for everyone to use. Deno is asking for $200K because the discovery phase is the most resource-intensive stage of litigation, where evidence is collected and arguments are built.

The company says that if there are leftover funds, they will donate them to the OpenJS to continue defending civil liberties in the digital space. None of the funds will go to Deno.

This is just the latest phase in Deno's attempt to get Oracle to relinquish the JavaScript Trademark. As we have previously reported, the company faced a setback when the USPTO Trial and Appeal Board dismissed Deno's fraud claim which was one the three strands of its case against Oracle. 

As outlined in The Strange Case Of the JavaScript Trademark, Deno's petition to the USPTO regarding the JavaScript trademark stems from a prolonged effort to have Oracle relinquish control over the term. The initial push began in September 2022 with an open letter from Ryan Dahl, co-founder of Deno Land, urging Oracle to release the trademark to the public domain. This request went unanswered. 

After a second open letter in September 2024 also failed to elicit a response, Deno initiated a formal cancellation process with the USPTO claiming that Oracle has abandoned the trademark through non-use, that "JavaScript" has become a generic term, and an accusation of fraudulent behavior during Oracle's 2019 trademark renewal. 

Having has the third claim disallowed, Deno is now focusing on the argument that the term "JavaScript" is universally recognized, making it generic and that by law trademarks that have become generic cannot remain trademarks. The second is  abandonment - Oracle itself does not have any products or service that it used the trademark for.

As Ryan Dahl put it in his blog post about the argument:

Everyone uses “JavaScript” to describe a language—not a brand. Not an Oracle product. Just the world’s most popular programming language.

Oracle had to respond to these points by August 7, and in its response said that they deny that JavaScript is a generic term. Deno says:

"If you're a web developer, it's self-evident that Oracle has nothing to do with JavaScript. The trademark system was never meant to let companies squat on commonly-used names and rent-seek – it was designed to protect active brands in commerce. US law makes this distinction explicit."

Deno says this is bigger than JavaScript:

"It’s about whether trademark law works as written, or whether billion-dollar corporations can ignore the rule that trademarks cannot be generic or abandoned. “JavaScript” is obviously both. If Oracle wins anyway, it undermines the integrity of the whole system."

At the point of writing, the GoFundMe campaign had raised over $40K. Follow this link to see the progress of the campaign and make a donation.

• Ian Elliot is the author of several books on JavaScript, principally Just JavaScript: An Idiomatic Approach,which is intended for programmers who are familiar with another language and takes a radical look at JavaScript that takes account of the way it is object-based. 

More Information

JavaScript™ Trademark Update

Deno GoFundMe Page

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The Strange Case Of the JavaScript Trademark

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