0009 — "SheetForge" is uncleared

Status: Open risk · 2026-08-20

Context

The name is in the repository, the binary, the installer, the window title, the package format extension and the documentation site. It has had no professional trademark clearance.

Preliminary searching found no obvious conflict for "SheetForge" in construction software, and that is worth very little. "Forge" is crowded across software and industrial products, and a preliminary search is not a clearance: infringement turns on similarity of sound, appearance, meaning, trade channels and relatedness of services, not on whether an identical string is registered.

For context on how easily this goes wrong, two earlier candidates for this product were dropped after a few minutes of searching: Planforge is an established project-portfolio platform, and RIVET is a construction workforce-management product. Both are close enough to this market to be unusable.

Decision

Ship under the name, record the risk, and do not build brand equity on it until it is cleared.

• No company registration, no domain portfolio, no trademark filing and no paid marketing under this name until counsel has signed off.
• The name is recorded here as an open risk rather than assumed to be fine.
• The rename cost is deliberately kept low: the name appears in configuration and documentation rather than being woven through the code. A rename is a find-and-replace plus a package-format extension migration, not a rewrite.

What a real clearance has to cover

• Exact marks, spacing variants, plurals, phonetic equivalents, word stems, translations, and the dominant term alone.
• Live and dead records, in the software and software-services classes, in every market that matters.
• Common-law use: search engines, app stores, GitHub, domains, corporate registries, social handles, AEC directories.
• Similarity analysis, not exact-string matching.

Domain and handle availability are operational checks. They are not evidence of trademark rights and must not be mistaken for it.

What it costs

If clearance fails, the rename touches the repository, the bundle identifier, the package extension, the documentation site and any release already published. Every day of adoption raises that cost, which is the reason this is a live risk and not a footnote.

What would resolve it

A written clearance opinion from qualified trademark counsel, and a decision on whether to file on an intent-to-use or use-in-commerce basis. Then this record is updated to Accepted with the opinion referenced.

This document is not legal advice.