Salesforce has confirmed it will withdraw its applications to trademark the phrase ‘social enterprise’, in the IT sector, following a sharp backlash from social enterprise bodies in the UK and abroad.

In a statement, the software company said it had “listened to the concerns of the social sector” and will not progress its applications to trademark the term in the US, EU, Australia and Jamaica.

Further, it has agreed to remove any references to ‘social enterprise’ in its marketing materials and desist from using it in future.

Pressure mounted against Salesforce’s plans as soon as they emerged early in August. Social Enterprise UK co-ordinated an online campaign against the trademark applications, and #Notinourname rapidly gathered support on Twitter.

But the determining factor appears to have been a letter sent last week to the company’s chairman and chief executive Marc Benioff (pictured), and signed by a swathe of senior figures from the social enterprise sector around the world.

Signatories to the letter included Grameen Bank founder Professor Yunus; shadow equalities minister Baroness Thornton; Lord Adebowale, chief executive of Turning Point; and representatives of the Social Enterprise World Forum Committee and associations in countries including Australia, Canada, Germany, Brazil, USA and South Africa.

The letter asked Benioff to desist, claiming that trademarks would create “unnecessary confusion” around the meaning of the phrase.

Salesforce uses the term to “describe how social and mobile cloud technologies empower companies to connect with customers, partners and employees in entirely new ways".

Confirming the decision to back down, Benioff said: “It was never our intention to create confusion in the social sector which we have supported since our founding.

“As a result of the feedback we received, salesforce.com has decided to withdraw its efforts to trademark the term ‘social enterprise’ and plans to discontinue its use in our marketing.”