Unless you're prepared to argue that the majority of the world uses online discussions or talks about online discussion systems, or that a conversation with your mom is a suitable anecdote when talking about online discussions, I think you should reconsider just how "completely wrong" my argument was.
Because, you're right, the examples I cited are trademarks within their respective fields, and that was the entire point of my comment.
I apologize for not making that more clear.
This all seems like a big-fish, small-pond vs. small-fish, medium-pond argument to me.
Moot maybe incredibly influential in his corner of the 'net, but the larger world probably doesn't know him. Moreover, the brand of his product isn't "moot", it's 4chan. To top it off, "moot" isn't a rare word, it's a commonly used word in English. All of this combines to make it very difficult for him to try to make any direct claims against Moot.it.
That's completely wrong. The majority of the world doesn't know who Moot is. The majority doesn't even know what 4chan is, even if they do start most of the internet memes.
If I asked my mom what "moot" meant, she'd probably tell me something like "something that's no longer relevant or worth arguing about". Using HN comments as a confirmation tool is equally ridiculous. We are not the right community to use when determining the legal usage of a phrase.
While each of the common names your have listed are trademarks, they are trademarks within their respective fields. It would be completely appropriate for me to start a watch shop and call it "Time" (assuming there isn't already a national or state trademark of watch shops called "Time").
Moot is an online persona, not a product. I'm not familiar with New York state law on "public rights of publicity", but I'm pretty sure that he doesn't have exclusive rights to the word "Moot".
This would be like Tom from MySpace suing Tom's shoes or TomTom. (Okay, not quite because the company is working on forum software which is close to 4chan, but it's not far off).