Yikes. That is... less than optimal.
Still, it gets me thinking. Interesting branding and PR challenge here...
"What are effective ways to create fulfilling market differentiation in a product that shares a name with another brand in it's space? Is it possible without changing the name? If so, what methods are recommended? Has it ever been done in the past? Is it even legal for two brands with near-identical names to exist in the same industry, or does one of them have to change, legally?"
Food for thought, great post, thank you.
(Also might be of interest to @lordbutterfly and his Ignite marketing efforts.)
'This' Hive blockchain is an actual blockchain, whereas the other 'Hive Blockchain' is a company mining completely different blockchains - so to some extent the argument was that these projects are not directly competing in the same market. However, they are competing in search engines and in public mindspace, just because of the same name being used.
The general approach appears to be to try to market the dApps as a priority, which does to some extent overcome the problem - but from an investment perspective, the name is still clashing.
In general, brandnames are only reserved within certain sectors, based on a trademark being issued/owned: https://lisamerriam.com/shared-brand-names-for-different-products/
I am not aware of a trademark being issued for this Hive Blockchain, but I am also not seeing any evidence of the other Hive Blockchain having registered a trademark either. Additionally, the other Hive Blockchain seems to only work in mining, which is something that this Hive Blockchain doesn't do. I am not a trademark lawyer and also not in the US - but afaik the absence of a direct clash at this moment, means that the two projects can co-exist legally. If this Hive wanted to introduce mining there could be a problem - or if the other group wanted to launch their own blockchain, there could also be a problem. My 2 satoshis.
I understand. Pretty sure the similarities between them are way closer than either company would prefer, which is enough to initiate litigation attempts sooner or later, as far as I know. Whether successful or not is another story, lol.
Regardless, I agree with your post's assessment that it's an undesirable situation, even if only for SEO purposes, and figured I'd share some of the PR/branding questions that came up if I were to navigate such a situation myself.
Thanks for the insights! 🙏