(This post is posted on my personal blog, since it contains personal rants and what not -- JPA will probably issue some statements after we've talked to the specialists handling these cases)

Weee. So some dude is trying to claim that the name "Perl", a language that has been around, used and abused for the past 20+ years, is his to claim. 

(.oO Just to give you some context, this same person is claimed to have been involved with pyramid sales scheme, has attempted to squat on and sell the domain twitter.co.jp to twitter, and is also currently applying to register the words "Ruby" and "Opensource" as his trademark as well )

As the head director of Japan Perl Association (JPA), I'm having to deal with this crud. Sigh. I really don't understand the mind twisting that these kind of people go through to persuade themselves that this is a Good Idea -- and I really hate the fact that both JPA and myself have to spend a significant amount of time and resource on this silly issue.

Anyways, unfortunately the trademark is already accepted. We now have to formally work on repealing it or at least make sure that it does not make working with Perl problematic going forward. So we're going work with specialists, and do the legal dance :/

BTW I've already sent emails to The Perl Foundation's trademark mailing list as well as to friends who I know involved in TPF, but currently no official response has been heard. I wonder what The Perl Foundation is willing to do with all of this. 

I'm not trying to blame TPF or anybody here, but a guidance as to what they want to do with this situation would be most welcome, so here's my public plea :)

Also, this is probably going to cost some amount of money -- probably in the thousands of dollars range. We may have to ask for assistance then. oh well.

Anyway, just a heads up for Perl mongers all over the world, so you know the current situation. Stay tuned.