Help Us Save MeshCore - MeshCore Blog

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Help Us Save MeshCore

July 04, 2026

12 minute read

Forward, by Scott Powell

Many of you got into MeshCore because it answered an as-yet unknown call.<br>The project had its beginnings here in late 2024, when I was<br>frustrated that there was no sufficiently open and permissive mesh protocol which could<br>form the centre of a vibrant ecosystem. From the start, I made my intentions clear, that I wanted<br>an open protocol, an open source core engine, but also permissive of 3rd party products that could build on top of it.<br>I then spent the next two months designing and writing what became the C++ MeshCore engine, and the 3 main firmware roles.

What I also made clear were the principles that project was founded on.<br>What has been great to see is how MeshCore has attracted the right people, as many have<br>noted and found the general spirit of conversations to be very positive and cooperative.

I believe its success has rested on two main pillars:

technical pragmatism (eg. keep it simple)

a positive and appropriate ethic for the times we’re in (eg. heavy gov/corp tracking and censorship)

As many of you know, a team split occurred earlier this year due to a steady erosion of trust, which culminated<br>in a trademark filing that completely went behind the core team’s back. We are now on a war footing as<br>every attempt from us to come to an understanding has been met with contempt by the former member.

All of this could have been avoided with one simple email from him: to state his intentions upon winning<br>the legal mark. That’s it. I’ve made my intentions for MeshCore widely known, but the former<br>member prefers to hide his intentions (and his methods). Part of the huge backlash against him and his derived<br>products is precisely because of his lack of openness. He has plenty of time<br>to rebrand even the latest MeshCore releases, modify them, promote them as his own, but he doesn’t<br>even have time to send us, the core team, a single email?

And the irony is he primarily wants to steer people from the MeshCore brand to his own brand! MeshCore<br>is simply a stepping stone, yet he still has shown no intention of dropping the trademark filing. It begs the question, why?

As a result, we have burned countless days and dollars mounting a legal challenge. This has<br>been very draining, and has been hurting the project. PR’s pile up, and features we’d hoped to have done<br>by now still haven’t been touched. So, we need to get this behind us and get the project back on track.

But, for the next phase, we need your help.

We are approaching the pointy end of the legals, with a deadline looming, and<br>crossing the next threshold is going to cost a lot, so we’re asking for help.<br>The details will be explained further in this post, by Liam and the rest of the team.

I just want to get back to where we keep pushing where MeshCore is going, innovating and seeing<br>just what is possible with a community-run mesh. We have SO much still to do! And hopefully we’ll<br>be back on track again soon.

warm regards,

Scott

Timeline Summary

We’ve included some key information from the timeline of events relating to this dispute below.<br>For the purposes of the timeline, we refer to the former team member as AK.

16/Nov/2024 Scott shares blog post announcing his plans to work on MeshCore.

20/Jan/2025 Scott publishes his open source MeshCore project on GitHub.

(things are going well for more than 1 year, with a thriving community)

(trust with AK was starting to erode)

(some internal disagreements came up)

29/Mar/2026 AK secretly files for UK trademark.

03/Apr/2026 We confronted AK on the filings. Conversation broke down with no resolution.

10/Apr/2026 Liam and Scott start New Zealand company “MeshCore Technologies Limited”.

11/Apr/2026 We file for MeshCore logo trademark in New Zealand.

20/Apr/2026 AK secretly files for EU trademark.

23/Apr/2026 We announce team split.

25/Apr/2026 We start engagements with legal counsel.

06/May/2026 We file for logo trademark in Australia.

06/May/2026 We file for word trademark in Australia, New Zealand, United States and China.

07/May/2026 We ask AK (again) to withdraw the UK/EU trademarks.

07/May/2026 AK responds saying he won’t withdraw the UK/EU trademark applications.

08/May/2026 AK says we will need to form some sort of commercial agreement with him.

09/May/2026 We ask AK for a proposal around trademark rights. He says he’ll have a think about it and get back to us.

19/May/2026 We follow up via email and discord asking again, about a proposal around the trademarks.

04/Jun/2026 We file for subsequent international designations for word trademark in Canada, Switzerland, European Union and United Kingdom.

12/Jun/2026 Our lawyers send notice of threatened opposition and extend UK trademark opposition period from 17/June/2026 to 17/July/2026.

18/Jun/2026 Our lawyers send demand letter to AK. (alleges copyright infringement, stolen assets, and tool cloning,...