Jeff Schulz

This op-ed is by Jeff Schulz, creative director at VSA Partners, a hybrid brand strategy and design agency. His writing about technology and intellectual property has appeared in The Drum, Recode, VentureBeat and AdAge, and he was an early contributor to Wired. OpenAI had big dreams for the name GPT.

Did you crowdfund The DAO? It’s the one that uses the Ethereum blockchain. If those two short sentences leave you scratching your head or feeling left out, it’s likely because the three names "The DAO," "Ethereum" and "blockchain" have yet to hit your feeds. In fact, however, what’s behind these names increasingly looks like the future. According to a May New York Times article, The DAO was the "most successful crowdfunded venture ever, by a significant margin." So something is clearly afoot.

There are lots of ways to launch a new tech brand. But behind every brand launch is a brand name launch. And behind every brand name is a tricky tale of trademark timing, especially for a sector as dynamic as technology. So the potentially multibillion-dollar question is, when should a tech name be trademarked?