From the Foundation-L post:
we sent a letter to Wikipedia Art that was aimed, not to threaten legal action, but to outline what our legal concerns were, and to try to begin a negotiation to resolve the matter amicably -- ideally by switching the domain name over to us, but not by requiring any content changes on their site at all.
This is disingenuous. A letter sent by a law firm "to outline our legal concerns" which uses legal language and tells a site that they will settle matters amicably if they meet a demand is a legal threat. It may not actually include the words "or we will sue you", but trying to spin it as not being a legal threat is absurd.
I can answer that question -- it's wholly unrelated to the recent Board statement on trademarks. Our concern was not primarily about trademarks.
This spawned a discussion where someone pointed out that the letter *was* primarily about trademarks, and Mike replied that it wasn't about the board statement, which only relates to the first of those two sentences. Again, spin.
Yeah, Wikipedia Art are basically trolls, but I find this disturbing. If Wikipedia can make legal threats to trolls and deny it, and accuse trolls of trademark violation in a baseless way, they can do it to anyone, and the next guy they do it to may not necessarily be a troll.