Jimmy ... GREAT commentary. A few things:

First, "WordPress SEO by Yoast" is no longer that software's title. Joost changed it a few weeks ago, and my guess is that he did so because of this action and the fact that he has a relationship with WordPress that neither he nor they can afford to mess with.

Second, you are certainly correct that vis a vis winning versus losing in this context, Joost was winning before this action forced both his hand and that of WordPress, and in the same context one would have to view me as having "lost".

Third (most important, and HIGHLY significant in EVERY context) is the wording you used: "...This is about the selective defense of a trademark...". That's the real issue and was both the largest impetus for us using the nine letters as we did and my belief that WordPress is going to have to change the policy they have in place re subdomains, etc.: you CAN'T selective defend a trademark; doing so is primary cause for losing it.

I really wish this could have worked out differently, not only because I wanted to do things ... the way I wanted to do them, but because I believe that because of the importance of a healthy community WordPress will be worse off with a registered mark on the nine letters than they would have been without it.

And so it goes ...