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Not a lawyer, but if the software project had an independent owner for its trademark, I believe that they'd have a case against 10gen. The name is deliberately chosen to provoke confusion between the two.



The MongoDB project was started by 10gen. I would be surprised if someone else owned the trademark.

So the new name is not so much deliberately chosen to provoke confusion as it is to reduce confusion.


Their previous full name was "10gen: the MongoDB Company"; they've been trying to dispel confusion over the company name vs. product for a long time (probably since they pivoted towards making Mongo the main business product - 10gen started as a PaaS company).

source: worked there

Edit: the title of this submission should really be "10gen: the MongoDB Company shortens their name to MongoDB, Inc." Less attention-grabby, more truthy.




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