you would think that 10+ years after the oracle/google java suit and the subsequent times automatic deletion of casual communications at any company with value it can lose programmers would stop loudly yelling their unvarnished opinion about how the law works, or worse, their ideas of how the law _should_ work after they thought about it for one to two minutes, but the comment thread here would prove you wrong.
and i will too!
ianal, but seemingly nobody’s even pointed in the right direction here. momofuku just got done being sued by some denver dingus for use of the term. the resolution of that suit ended up with them being assigned ownership of the mark “chile crunch”. they did not just wake up and decide this was their term and that they should start suing people for fun. once ownership is assigned, though, you have to _actively_ defend it, unless you wanna keep paying more lawyers to fight off more dinguses. basically a game of spoons here.
i don’t think the details of all communications are public, all i’ve seen is assertions that they sent cease and desists, but i don’t think i’ve heard anything about licensing terms? just letting people use the term without asking means dinguses can take a shot, but you can keep defense up by licensing the trademark, which doesn’t have to be at an abusive rate, but does come with terms that would absolutely upset the hell out of a competitor. but again, not really another option.