Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was confused when I first saw the project, cartoon logo and "Gremlin Free " name, and I'm intimately familiar with both the Apache TinkerPop Gremlin open-source project, its third-party libraries, and the extensive ASF legal process we went through registering and identifying the use of marks. Read up on your trademark, IP and copyright law. The use of similar marks is not permitted when there is potential for conf…
It doesn't sound like you were confused about whether they were the same project, it sounds like you were immediately concerned whether the other endeavor was in conflict with your trademark. That may constitute confusion but it's not the sort of confusion trademarks were designed to mitigate.
When a new third-party project site goes online, SOP is to review the new site/code, understand what it is and how it fits into the overall ecosystem, and then put their project lead in touch with TinkerPop's resident artist and illustrator, Ketrina Yim [2], who is available to create custom artwork/logos and Gremlin character illustrations tailored around the new project's theme.
However, when I dug into this site's docs to see how it was related, I couldn't find a clear connection. And when I checked with our team, they said Apache Legal has been aware of the issue since last year.
[1] Branding https://tinkerpop.apache.org/policy.html
[2] Ketrina Yim, Illustrator https://tinkerpop.apache.org/index.html#committers