The only reasonable reason for enforcement would be cases of absolute impersonations or unwarranted claims of association. Yep. You said it. Your post has nothing to do with the community that uses the tag but instead tries to trade off the fact that the Steemit community has come to trust the tag because the Steamians who belong to the community that uses that tag spend so much effort working on their content.
Unwarranted claims of association? Check. Your use of the tag is clearly meant to encourage views by association. So by your own words, enforcement would be justified in this case. Instead, I see very reasonable attempts to explain to you, rather than giving you the flags I believe you truly deserve.
I also think the comment that you have characterized as a "cease and desist" notice was very polite and entirely appropriate under the circumstances. No one mentioned flagging before now (except you) and no one spoke of trademarks (except you). Instead the note mentioned the "intention" behind the use of the tag and asked that you honor that. Let's hope you do.
The usage of metatags does not qualify as impersonation or association. I would have to write in my post I am "trademark" or I am working with or I am connected with "trademark." If you guys would only check your egos at the door you would see, I'm not your enemy... Lol...
I wrote the post because quote "this incident got me thinking about the implications..."
Again, because quote "It brings up an important issue for the Steem Platform"
Why?
Because if Steem is ever going to be taken serious as a Social Media Platform, given its commercial nature "legalism" will become a more and more present force.
I mentioned the incident at the beginning and the end of this post merely to express what brought the topic up. The section about "Inevitable Realities" is called a trends prediction and was not implied to have anything to do with reports of actual happenings within the prior mentioned incident. Go ahead and flag away it only proves my "trends prediction" and corroborates "abuse of the flagging system."
Another article you all might might want to read about how even simple memes like the one above are increasingly becoming targets of infringement claims.