Re:Ask HN: How brand name usernames are handled?
by brudgers on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @02:10PM
(#8881842)
I'd go even further and be proactive. Prohibit names with obvious potential to cause problems during sign up, e.g. fail to validate:
*google*| *iphone* | *microsoft*
with a "username not available".It won't entirely avoid the problem -- you can't stop the truly determined from creating problems -- but it will stop the casual lol's.
It isn't reasonable to assume you'll be able to reserve every single trademarked username. So all you can do is have a policy and process in place to handle trademark complaints. You may also want to inform users at sigh-up that usernames subject to trademark complaints may be lost.
Then if the company wants to utilise their trademark as a legitimate representation of that trademark, then I'd likely have a process there also to verify that they are who they say they are.