Deno vs Oracle: The ugly custody battle for JavaScript…

Key Takeaways

Have you ever thought about who owns JavaScript? The answer may surprise you. At this point, it feels so common that it's kind of like asking who owns water. But if we've learned anything from Nestle, it's that corporate greed has no limit. And to make it even worse, the actual owner of JavaScript didn't create it, doesn't maintain it, and isn't even involved in its ongoing development. I could literally be thrown in prison for broadcasting the words JavaScript on screen without the express written consent of the Oracle Corporation. But there's one guy who took a look at this mess and in a stunning act of developer heroism or sheer boredom, decided to pick a legal battle against a company with unlimited resources. In today's video, we'll break down the crazy battle to control the JavaScript trademark. It is August 27th, 2025, and you're watching the Code Report. Now, I can't prove it, but I think this whole problem first started in 1995 when Nicholas Cage won his first Oscar. At the time, websites were simple static documents, and the way you view them was most likely using the Netscape Navigator browser. The founder of Netscape, Mark Andre, had a vision for the web that made it more than just a way to share and distribute documents. He envisioned a more dynamic platform with rich clientside interactivity. And to achieve this, you need to put a programming language inside the browser. And there was one obvious choice at the time, Scheme. Developed in the 1970s at MIT, Scheme was a minimal, lightweight, embedded dialect of lisp. It's got first class functions, closures, and dynamic typing. And there was only one man in the world up to the challenge of adding it to Netscape Navigator, Brendan Ike. By the time he had joined the company on that vision, Netscape and Sun Microsystems, the owner of the newly created awesome programming language, Java, had made a quote wide-ranging agreement for product distribution and technology exchange. That meant the scheme dream was over and the Java nightmare was about to begin. However, they couldn't just put Java in the browser because the language needed to be dumbed down enough for web developers. From there, as the legend states, in just 10 days, Brennan created the first version of the language and called it Mocha. It had the functionality of Scheme, the object orientation of Small Talk, and because of the collaboration with Sun Micros Systemystems, the syntax of Java. Eventually, the name Mocha was changed to livescript, then lives script to JavaScript as a marketing ploy to ride the hype train of Java at the time. It's hard to believe, but back then people thought Java was a good programming language. But most importantly, it gave Sun the legal grounds to trademark the JavaScript name. Fast forward to today, and Sun doesn't even exist, as it blew up in the do-com bubble and sold to Oracle in 2010, which gave them control of the JavaScript trademark. Like, have you ever wondered why the official language spec for JavaScript is called ECMAScript? And why is there no JavaScript conference or JavaScript newsletter? Well, it's all because of Larry. >> Damn it, Larry. Bananas. Oracle is a company that's more involved in sailboat racing than the JavaScript ecosystem and can choose to sue your ass if you dare to use the magic word. So, how do we fix this? Well, it's simple. You build up a decade of goodwill, then ask them kindly to release the trademark. And when they ignore you, you sue them. At least that's exactly the path Ryan Dull has taken, the creator of Node.js and founder of Dino. Ryan wrote an open letter to Oracle back in 2022 on his personal blog, claiming the trademark is a dark cloud looming over the world's most popular programming language, and the best value Oracle could derive from the trademark would be from the goodwill it receives by granting it to the public domain. After that was ignored, he created JavaScript.tm, a more strongly worded letter that again argued that Oracle needs to release the trademark and by this time also included some legal arguments. In short, it's because Oracle has never offered a product called JavaScript and that the term JavaScript has become so widely used without any interference from Oracle. The trademark should be considered abandoned according to the definition of title 15 of the United States trademark code. And oh, by the way, Oracle actually committed fraud when they renewed the JavaScript trademark in 2019 by submitting no.js as evidence of Oracle's use in commerce, a project which ironically Ryan created and has no involvement from Oracle. As of today, this letter has received over 26,000 signatures of support, including one of them from Brendan Ike himself and many prominent members of the JavaScript community, and Oracle has completely ignored it. This led to Ryan and Dino formally filing a petition with the USPTO to cancel the trademark a few months later in November of 2024. This forced Oracle to respond after delaying until after the deadline when they submitted a partial motion disputing the fraud claim by saying that the fact they submitted notice evidence of proof was irrelevant since they also submitted another project called Oracle Jet. If we have any Oracle Jet users in the room, please raise your hand. But I had never heard of it and apparently it's a UI toolkit based on modern JavaScript, CSS3, and HTML 5. After going back and forth and paying lawyers to repeat a few of the same arguments, the trademark trial and appeal board cited with Oracle and dismissed Dino's fraud claim is stating the no.js screenshot isn't fraud by itself and that fraud will require a specific false statement or knowledge and intent to deceive. And just a few weeks ago, Oracle also addressed the two other claims, again denying that JavaScript is a generic term and that the trademark has been abandoned. So, what's next? In short, more lawyers. Both sides will go to Discovery where they'll set some ground rules and keep gathering evidence over the next year. From there, they'll present in the summer of 2026 with closing arguments coming later that year, and we should have a final decision from the government sometime before January 2027. Win or lose though, using the JavaScript trademark freely isn't going to help you write better code. And that's why you need to check out Atlassian, the sponsor of today's video. They just launched the Rodev CLI, which transforms your terminal into an AI coding agent that speeds up your entire workflow. It can automate repetitive jobs like writing tests and reviewing pull requests. And it's intelligent enough to answer questions about specific repos in your company's codebase. That's because unlike most AI tools, Robo is designed specifically for professional developers working on large enterprise applications. And if your team already uses Atlassian, it works seamlessly with your Jira tickets and will update Confluence documentation for you directly from the terminal. You'll try out the robo dev beta for free with the link below. This has been the code report. Thanks for watching and I will see you in the next