Daniel-
Just as copyright exists even in the absence of a (C) symbol, a TM is not needed to create a trademark.
It's not quite that simple. Unregistered trademarks are a concept only acknowledged by some legislations (while unregistered copyright is acknowledged by all), and even in these countries, there may be precedent law that the plaintiff has better grounds for claiming grievance when he has announced his intention to file, or at least publicized the trademark as such. This is the reason why companies do add the [TM] to their names, after all.
Nobody proposed sending nasty grams. We should, of course, exhaust all non-legal options before using the law to protect the Wikipedia brand name.
I don't think we should use the law at all.
I highly doubt it...
Sorry, but you are clearly wrong on this point.
Then cite from the Russian civil code or from Russian precedents the relevent passages that show that Russian law acknowledges unregistered trademarks. You don't know if it does? Then how can you claim that I am "clearly" wrong?
Trademarks are evil enough as it is.
No they aren't; the improper use of trademark law to beat others into submission after they (without malice and unknowingly) violated a trademark is the only thing that is evil here.
Using trademarks to restrain non-commercial activity is always wrong -- non-commercial groups are no real threat to us or our brand. If these Russians are actually making money off our brand, that is another matter. But they registered the domain first, we have never registered a trademark, you don't even know if Russia allows unregistered trademarks, so it would be morally wrong and possibly illegal to threaten them for using our name. We can ask them nicely to point the domain to ru.wikipedia.org. But if they don't, that's about it. In any case, Jimbo needs to approve any actions that are taken.
Regards,
Erik