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Re:Ask HN: How brand name usernames are handled? by Someone1234 on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @01:02PM (#8881465)
To some extent regardless of how you feel about the "Big Guy Vs. the Little Guy" arguments these big organisations do have a legitimate trademark claim over the term and someone could use the username with the intention of misleading others.

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.

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.

Re:Ask HN: How brand name usernames are handled? by aswerty on Wednesday January 14, 2015 @03:37AM (#8884995)
It does seem like a reasonable step to take because any 3rd party who takes such a username does piggy back on the brand reputation of these companies; intentionally or not.
Re:Ask HN: How brand name usernames are handled? by brudgers on Wednesday January 14, 2015 @11:04AM (#8887075)
There is a Github repository waiting to be made.