This blog post is about who will be using our project — and why it means we have to change our name. This project attracted me because of its real life use. As fun as it would have been to spin up some niche project that gets binned the moment I was done with the course, I decided to pick up something that has real use. Seedy was interesting because it was a non-commercial project but would have users and real application in peoples work lives as well as the environment.
Our project sponsor is part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the USFS, and by extension our project is involved with the government. Our intent was having use beyond just the government however; Providing access to farms, nurseries, and any general person is the goal. If someone wants to tell us they have seeds, need seeds, need plants, or are starting a large rehabilitation project, we are open to it. We even accept data from mobile collection platforms for biologists who collect seeds out in the field. The USFS or Department of Forestry would use it to rehabilitate habitats for wildlife.
But that brings me to why we are likely going to be changing our name. Seedy was picked by the people before us, but also before a company called seedy existed.
This presents two issues. The first is rather obvious, which is that of trademarks. Even though no one will be profiting from the project, the names are identical and the applications are too similar. We talked to a “consultant” with our project who said it was probably a good idea to change our name, even if it were unlikely there would be any legal issues.
The second issue can be seen in the screenshot above: weed. Being a project sponsored by the government, our partner didn’t want to be associated with cannabis. We don’t think it would be a good look to have cannabis seed distribution company come up when our name was searched.
This little hiccup shouldn’t be a problem for us though, and I suppose it’s best to have our name changed sooner rather than later. Regardless of what our name will be, our goal to provide access to native plants will remain the same.
