You can't just trademark 3 letters in a way so that nobody else can use them. In fact there's hundreds of trademarks that are the letters "kik" in various logos[1].
What they trademarked is a bunch of specific logos containing those letters. Doesn't prevent other people from also using those 3 letters in some other way.
In fact when he wrote "kik", my first thought was the he was talking about the German textile discount store - which is the first result for me when I google those letters.
It's easy to be an armchair HN lawyer when you have no skin in the game.
As an attorney, do you think he was misusing the "Kik" trademark?
I don't know all the facts here, but I do know that as a practical matter, it comes down to a whole bunch of factors, among them, use in commerce, possibility of confusion, etc. But I can say that judges take a dim view of people who tell others to "fuck off" and who appear not to have a justifiable reason for using a name nor a long history of doing so.
I also know that bullies don't always win - Nissan Computer still owns nissan.com, not the motor company.
I'm shocked to see that something like this could happen on npm - where a single threat of getting lawyers involved can get your package transferred away from you. It really wants to make me not publish anything on npm too actually.