As a corporate IP lawyer, I can say I have to agree. Kickstarter was probably told (rightly so, in fact) to stay out of the legal disputes, and tell projects/trademark owners to sort it out amongst themselves. IE follow valid court orders that tell them to do things, but otherwise, don't participate in these types of dispute.

This will likely get them sued eventually for not doing anything, but this probably won't happen until later in life (if Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc, are any benchmark). So far Google's had a good record, at least in the US, of not having liability, trademark wise.

On the other hand, if they actually start to take down projects or otherwise deal with trademark disputes, they bring all sorts of possible liability onto themselves. Plus the hassle of trying to verify trademark claims, and effectively being asked to judge whether the usage of a given trademark is infringement. All bad ideas to be involved in. There is literally no upside for them.

Worse, despite nice TOSen that disclaim liability for everything under the sun, you can't always remove all liability. It's like grocery store parking lots that have large signs saying "not responsible for lost or stolen possessions left in cars". This is done because in a lot of places, they are actually legally responsible, and they are just trying to get people to stop suing them all the time.

The trust and responsibility aspects are certainly a significant concern, but this has little to do with whether they should get involved in the business of disputes between projects and trademark owners. Heck, if you wanted to encourage "authorized" projects, you could even have some nice logo display program where verified sponsorship means you get to display some logo, and it only shows up on those kinds of projects. Or you establish some sort of "trustrank" scoring or whatever where relationship with trademark holder or IP holder is a scoring factor.

Whatever the solution, there are plenty of ways to incentivize good behavior and happier trademark holders without making yourself an arbitrator.

Well, and has Kickstarter considered the impact on people not trusting the information provided? Have they considered that this may ruin their business?