Oracle controls the JavaScript trademark because it acquired Sun Microsystems in 2009, which had applied for the trademark as early as 1995 to the United States Patent and Trademark Office. This trademark was approved in 2000.

Although this database giant has not used the name JavaScript on its commercial products, it owns the trademark rights for this name. For this reason, organizations related to JavaScript, such as JSConf, which specializes in discussing JavaScript, dare not mention JavaScript again to avoid trouble. Although many developers around the world enjoy using JavaScript, conferences related to it cannot directly mention the name JavaScript. Upon careful consideration, this is quite a sad thing.

In a newly released open letter, Ryan Dahl, creator of Node.js; Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript; Michal Ficarra, editor of JavaScript specifications; Rich Harris, creator of Svelte framework; Isaac Schleuter, creator of npm; Feross Aboukhadijeh, CEO of Socket; James Snell, member of the Node.js Technical Steering Committee; Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski, hosts of Syntax FM; and over 9000 other signatories at the time of submission urge Oracle to abandon its unused and therefore unnecessary JavaScript trademark.

As a long-term member of the JavaScript community, I believe it's time for Oracle to release the JavaScript trademark, "said one of the main signatories, Aboukhadijeh, in a media interview. JavaScript has become the foundation of modern web development, far beyond the control of any company

By retaining this trademark, Oracle has brought unnecessary confusion to the developer community. Now is the time to make JavaScript free, both in name and in practice, so that this language can continue to develop and thrive without being affected by artificial barriers

In fact, this is already the second time these outstanding JavaScript figures have attempted to provoke a response from Oracle. In 2022, Dahl, the creator of Node.js, published a similar article urging Oracle to release the JavaScript trademark, but Oracle did not respond.

It's not surprising that my previous advice to Oracle to abandon its trademark was ignored, "Dahl said to foreign media The Register. This time, after a lawyer friend mentioned the trademark revocation process of the US Patent and Trademark Office and pointed out that they have been cracking down on non use of trademarks recently, I took this matter even more seriously. I will no longer expect Oracle to release the JavaScript trademark kindly (if there is one, it would be a bad choice)

Dahl stated that his goal is to improve JavaScript as it has become the default programming language in the world, primarily through his work on the open-source JavaScript runtime Deno.

Many of humanity's infrastructure is built on the internet, and JavaScript, like HTTP, HTML, and CSS, is the core component of the network. Therefore, laying a good foundation for it is really worth doing, "he explained.