A couple belated points buried in a wall of blah...

(1) Ownership of a trademark does not, under US law or via the Madrid protocols, absolutely preclude the use of said mark in commerce by a third party.

(2) Ownership of a trademark does not, under US law, via the Madrid protocols or the according to rules of the ICANN, impart any de jure or de facto ability on the part of the trademark holder to confiscate, or otherwise obtain by force of law or administrative action, any and all domain names containing said mark, in whole or in part.

Those two facts notwithstanding, there is NOTHING in US law that precludes or substantially discourages the owner of a mark from seeking to preclude the use of their mark in commerce by a third party and/or to seek the confiscation of any direct or tangentially relevant domains in a court of law.

The outcome of that legal action, as any person of sufficient age and experience with the US courts can attest, is dependent in largest part on one factor alone - the financial resources of the party defending the mark.

In other words, he who has the gold, makes the rules.

If you want to register wordpressfanclub.com (I haven't checked its status) and run a fan club for WordPress, feel free. The WPF has little to no chance to stop you from doing so either via US courts or via ICANN - so long as you can afford to answer them in court and at the administrative hearings should they choose bring the weight of their legal budget to bear against you.

Conversely, if you want to register wordpressiscontrolledbyanevilcabal.com (I haven't checked its status) and run a satirical website slamming the WPF, you are likely within your legal rights to do so. But again, your legal rights end about 30 seconds after your legal budget is exhausted.

A trademark of "WORDPRESS" has both incredibly good and horribly bad potential ramifications. Which come to pass remains to be seen.

The situation referenced in this article should, if nothing else, make it clear that the WPF has the ability to have substantial influence on who are winners and losers in the WP environment.

WordPress SEO by Yoast....winner. The WPF allows his use of "WordPress" in his Meta tags. Jeff Yablon....not a winner. The WPF opposed his use "WordPress" in his Meta tags. And so on and so forth.

This isn't about a domain name. This is about the selective defense of a trademark relating to some GPL code.