I don’t think this will outright “kill” rust. Just as the article says, a similar situation existed in the past with mozilla. That’s how IceDove, IceWeasel and IceCat were born.

I think a similar situation could come up with Rust being rebranded as Crab or something. But I think it might not come to this, as Kernel devs will be influential in steering the direction the Rust foundation takes, in molding the trademark policy.