JavaScript: Oracle sticks to trademark and defends itself against Deno's lawsuit

The dispute over the trademark rights to JavaScript continues. Oracle has requested an extension of the deadline for a response from the competent authority.

At the end of November, Deno filed a formal request with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to cancel Oracle's JavaScript trademark.

More time for more disputes

Deno has now written on Mastodon and X that Oracle is not giving in, but has initially requested a longer deadline. Originally, the time would have expired on January 4, but Oracle is now asking for time until February 3 to respond. Deno is ready to fight and wants to show that “JavaScript” is widely recognized as a general term and is not controlled by Oracle.

Ryan Dahl is not only the founder of Deno, which is behind the JavaScript runtime of the same name, but previously created the JavaScript runtime environment Node.js.

Public good instead of company property

The declared aim of the deletion request is for JavaScript to be recognized as a public good and for no one to have to fear legal action from Oracle if they use the name. Deno justifies the request by arguing, among other things, that JavaScript has established itself as a generic term for the programming language described in the ECMA 262 language specification.

Dahl had already asked Oracle to release the JavaScript trademark in an open letter in 2022. Another open letter in the fall of 2024 received a good 14,000 signatures from members of the community, including JavaScript inventor Brendan Eich.

Heise conference enterJS 2025 in May

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(rme)