Shocking News: Reddit has trademarks for forum names like "Explain Like I'm Five" registered on USPTO.

Tag365@lemmy.world to Reddit@lemmy.world – 371 points –
tsdr.uspto.gov

I thought stuff like "Explain Like I'm Five" and "AMA" was proprietary to the community, or at least the Reddit community, not Reddit as a company.

I checked and I found at least those subreddit forum names were registered as trademarks.

  • TODAY I LEARNED (TIL)
  • SHOWERTHOUGHTS
  • EXPLAIN LIKE I'M FIVE
  • NOSLEEP
  • AM I THE ASSHOLE?
  • IAMA
  • RPAN (actual subreddit name is R/PAN but they messed up the word mark for the registration I think.)
  • ASK REDDIT (makes sense since this includes Reddit's name.)
  • NATURE IS FUCKING LIT (I thought you couldn't register word marks with swearing but I guess I'm wrong. Must be only for offensive terms then...)
  • ASK ME ANYTHING (yes somehow this "generic term" is a trademark now...")
  • AMA
  • ELI5

Also they have some trademark registration applications for WALLSTREETBETS that have not been finalized yet.

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Did Spez trademark "im just a little shit pig" too?

Explain Like I'm Steve "Jailbait" Huffman

Did he actually defend that subreddit or is it more of a general “this happened and he didn’t do anything about it until he had no choice?”

I like to err on the side of caution and assume that he contributed CP, just to be safe.

He was added as a mod pretty much for shits and giggles, he didn't do any actual moderation. Still, he allowed the sub and many others like it, so very much the second option.

Imagine the balls it takes to take user-created forum names and register them as trademarks.

....Isn't.... "Explain Like I'm Five" an Office reference first?

None of these would stand up to scrutiny in court.

U.S. court system: "Providing a trademark for these would be an instance of gross negligence and general abuse of copyright law to provide a corporation with no genuine claim to these references carte blanche use and legal guarantee of sole ownership of them. So we're going to do that because we're functionally an engine of capital and not actually a mechanism of justice."

I get the feeling that the US copyright is largely being operated on a pinky swear basis. For example - the current copyright on the original Bitcoin whitepaper is held by a well known con artist, simply because he was the first to register it.

This.

You can try to trademark a lot of things, doesn't mean it will hold, especially if there have been prior uses (which there have been for just about all of them)

Wasn’t ELI5 a line from the Office?

Yup. That episode aired December 2008. r/explainlikeim5 was created in 2012. Can't tell when r/eli5 was created, as it's now private.

If you needed any further proof that stock prices are mostly bullshit, check out the graph for RDDT.

It's interesting and depressing to me that reddit as a corporate entity is the antithesis of what 90% of active redditors would claim themselves to be. Yet they stay there and participate anyway.

Kind of a metaphor for modern politics if you think about it. Not until people are getting drafted to fight for oil or fresh water will younger people give a shit and change a thing. "My vote doesn't matter." Vs. every single conservative person in their country showing up to vote as if their ill-gotten gains depend on it.

Wow, reddit is actually up 23 percent year to date. Boy, if I needed any more evidence we were in an economic bubble than that....

I remember when r/natureisfuckinglit was created, it's relatively new sub, there was a cool photo on r/earthporn, some dude commented "nature is fucking lit", someone else commented there should be a sub for this and the next person created the sub

That dude signed a contract, said anything he writes belongs to Reddit in all mediums and in perpetuity.

I mean that would hardly hold up to a challenge fir inadequate consideration. The value of all intellectual property in perpetuity is easily worth far more than access to the reddit website.

Nah, you get to use the website. Access to a computer system in exchange for IP created with it is a pretty open and shut case. The value doesn't have to be equal, it just can't be unconscionable. Buyer beware.

  • RPAN (actual subreddit name is R/PAN but they messed up the word mark for the registration I think.)

They didn't mess up, it was called RPAN from the start. And that's something Reddit launched, so it makes sense they'd trademark it.

I don't even think most of these would hold up in court unless they add "r/" in front of them. Reddit reserves the non-exclusive right to use user content however they want, and I don't think this includes making user-submitted phrases their trademarks. I haven't read the ToS though so another clause might reserve this right too. There might be a claim to words like "subreddit", "r/" and "RPAN" and derivatives because they are based off the "Reddit" trademark.

I'm sure the fine upstanding folks working so earnestly as corporate lawyers will think of something. :D

Nosleep is fucking podcast they can't own that name can they? Nor Shower thoughts and damn sure TIL.

Is it in the TOS somewhere that anything created or posted on their site essentially belongs to them?

I think they’d have a hard time defending some but not all of those. I’m sure many of the Redditors heavily involved in those subs, including the mods, have no idea, though!

Wait.

The applications for "NOSLEEP" and "R/NOSLEEP" were filed by Reddit Inc in... August 3, 2018?

And "THE NO SLEEP PODCAST" by Creative Reason Media (the actual publishers of the podcast) was filed in August 5, 2016, but... got dismissed or abandoned?

...What?

Oh yea, I remember that site. You guys still getting emotional over it? Give it a clean break. The shit's poison. I know I shouldn't talk about an ex because people often get back together, but you can do it.

This is in a community specifically on the subject of Reddit.

I getcha.

Gotta say - regardless of which community we’re on, this informative post raises valid and interesting questions about important laws in the United States.