Hi. Since no one has explained, I'd quote a part from OSMF Board
Meeting Minutes:
OSMF received C+D letter from someone who trademarked the word
“Geocode(TM)” and asks us to remove all references to this from our web
site where it is connected in some way with Google services. Simon is
in contact with a lawyer about this. We might actually remove the few
occurrences because they are not essential to us.
So, you can still use "geocode" as a word. But you cannot, as it seems,
use it in relation with Google services. That is, no "geocode using
google" and such. That's why some links to Google Maps were removed. I
don't know about Nominatim, especially MapQuest's Nominatim, but to be
on a safe side, better use "search". And if you don't mention any
services, you can use that word freely, as in "now having parsed
coordinates, do the reverse geocoding to aquire their human-readable
locations". After all, the wikipedia page for "Geocoding" doesn't
mention any trademarks (although it has Google Maps as its first
reference).
IZ
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