Hi Howard,
I'm no legal expert, so trademarks are not something I can shine a light on...
But as far as your idea of 'teaming up' goes, to combine, and benefit from, multiple skills that several people together might have, to lighten the workload and to work more efficient and faster, and succesfully deliver a product that actually can be used, I could not agree more. I've been suggesting this for a long time. Solo projects are very difficult, and a good modeler isn't necessarily a good texture creating artist, or programmer, or knows about ship dynamics, researcher, you name it.. Teamwork to cover all the bases is the best method in my humble opinion.
Fellow administrator Terry Russell and myself have been setting up something along those lines, where we intend to make a great variety of static objects for the game, focussing on navigational aids mostly, like buoys, beacons, signs, lighthouses, lightships, and various other ojects like that. There are a few more modelers who also were very interested and joined us to help out, aswell.
If you are interested in doing some brainstorming, or planning something like this, I'd be keen to see what we can come up with! Drop me a line if you want to get into this perhaps, or if you like to know more about the project we intend to do, and such.
Regards,
Fred