The changing global economy and technology are contributing to the ideas surrounding telecommuting and distance working.

Anyway, I’m certainly open to having a conversation with them — trademarks exists to serve a purpose, which is to prevent confusion in the marketplace. If Citizen Space Zurich opens and our former patrons show up, again, expecting to drop-in for free and can’t, if they come back to us and complain, that’ll be an unfortunate situation — for everyone involved.

Here’s looking to a positive resolution and progress being made on these kinds of questions!

As long as I don’t have any information about the circumstances, hope remains that it’s rather inadvertence or absence of consideration than intention.

I hope they will contact you ASAP, also if perhaps that wouldn’t be required from a juridical point of view. I also believe that the community spirit and fairness are important aspects of the coworking idea. People who know the original Citizen Space in SF would likely feel misled by the identical name of the “citizen space” in Zurich, once they found out about the conceptual differences.

So for the sake of fairness, I think the concept should be adjusted to match the one of the original more closely and there should be some kind of endorsement or co-operation. Or one should consider changing the name of the “citizen space” in Zurich.

The spirit of community and sharing should extend to a certain degree, but when it crosses into the realm of commerce, do the community or commercial expectations apply? I’m more curious generally about this question… since I’m not sure. If, for example, the folks starting the space in Zurich came up with the name and we, in San Francisco, were so impressed by their project that we started a local effort under the same name, would they be thrilled or concerned? For now I’m open to seeing how this plays out — and how much the community demands of the space the things that we’ve built into the model of Citizen Space.

my thoughts on coworking.