Meta given 30 days to cease using the name Threads by company that trademarked it 11 years ago
techspot.com
Meta given 30 days to cease using the name Threads by company that trademarked it 11 years ago::undefined
Meta given 30 days to cease using the name Threads by company that trademarked it 11 years ago::undefined
Classic Facebook douchebaggery.
Didn't they do the same thing to Meta? Aren't they being sued now?
Eh, unlike some of the other pretty blatantly frivolous lawsuits we’ve seen lately (such as the google chrome cast one) this seems pretty legit. They had a globally recognized company called threads that worked in the software industry and meta had made multiple offers for their IP showing they knew about them and still went ahead. Seems clear cut and Meta will likely have to change the name.
you're right in almost everything
Meta has a massive amount of resources, I'm sure they can afford more lawyers than the British company. Courts tend to favor the one with most resources, so the smaller company will have a very hard time trying to make Meta to change their app's name.
Not so much in the UK, but we’ll just have to wait and see. It may just end up that, in the UK, they’ll be called ThreadsUK or some legally-acceptable variant of the name that “meaningfully distinguishes” them according to the court.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Threadstropolis.
Threads a go-go
And disapprove of the name only because that sounds pretty cool
Like The London Suede, whom no one, at any time has ever referred to as The London Suede
I’m inclined to believe you, because I’ve never heard of it!
them.. Suede the band :) In the US their CD's are labeled The London Suede cause some kids out in California or some shit were called Suede first and wouldn't settle for a reasonable amount, so Suede got to keep their name in the states, never saw a penny, and when anyone on this planet mentiones Suede theyre not talking about the american kids waah waaaah
The UK courts will be inclined to favour the UK company over an American conglomerate. They have to operate within the confines of the law but the British government really do want to show that they can actually act against these big multinationals (they need the win) so there may be quite a lot of interest in this case.
I can totally see the courts been heavily encouraged to throw the book at them as much as possible.
While you're absolutely right, there is often an element of appeasing the big US tech companies in London, given that the likes of Meta and Amazon are two of the biggest employers in the tech industry here. Pair this with the fact that we've got a large tech industry with very zero unicorns or home-grown success stories with a UK HQ, and I can see some pressure to compromise.
There's a reason why FAANG companies barely pay tax here, and it's often because the threat of packing up and going home would absolutely crush the UK tech industry.
Pretty sure the original company will accept at a certain price, they just want to put legal pressure to make it rise, which is fair.
It should be easy to rename as no one is using it.
But seriously, this is the kind of bullshit those monopolistic companies are doing all the time. Another infuriating one was with Google's Go language. Author contacted them that he was using the name for 10 years and even had a book written about the language, but they basically just went with it anyway, because he was nobody and they were Google. Also, this is speculating, but I won't believe when they came up with the name they didn't use their Google to look the name up, probably that's why they closed the issue so quickly.
What's the chrome cast one?
Basically a company had a patent of a barely similar device that shouldve fallen under common sense patent law and had zero plans on produce/selling the product. They’re basically just a company thats the patent equivalent of landlords
It's called patent troll.
They should call it Y.
I don’t know about UK trademark law, but I would imagine that, like with other countries, using a similar or identical name is okay, but only if you’re in a totally different industry. The original threads is also a messaging product, which doesn’t bode well for a lawsuit.
I imagine they thought they could just force a smaller company’s hand. Meta’s marketing, e-staff, and legal team are a bunch of corporate bullies.
B2B is a completely different marketplace than B2C, and “internal search index of company’s digital messages” is a different industry than “social media app.”
The company’s own trademark registration indicates the trademark applies to “computer software, software and apparatus for the extraction of business information and knowledge.” That doesn’t sound like a social media app to me, either.
Both Threads are designed to strip-mine data from messages.
Zuck's is just pretending it's about something else.
If it's all in writing you can't just force another company to do what you want. What you can do is wriggle, twist and delay until it becomes too expensive for the smaller company to continue to pursue.
However judges are more than well aware of this technique and will allow the plaintiff to accrue costs against Legal Aid (paid for by government).
So what usually happens:
If Small Co is energetic, young and courageous, they may choose to fight to the death. But Legal Aid has a limit...
It is too bad Meta couldn't afford a lawyer to do a search for trademarks and copyrights. Really shame.
Did you even read the article??
They literally made an offer to buy the domain Threads.app 4 times and got rejected.
It was sarcasm. Meta has lots of money.
And then figured they'd be fine if they deleted their Facebook account. If your Facebook account gets deleted you get deleted in real life, after all.
TIL Facebook follows Wes Craven rules
You think they were unaware?
They already planned for this. They’ll settle out of court. It’s pennies to them and a planned business expense, like a fine
Completely forgot Threads was even a thing.
So did everyone else lol
I don't know which concerns me more: That Meta gets their asses kicked, or why the f-ck someone was able to trademark the word "Threads".
You don't trademark the word "threads", you trademark it within the context of the industry you're in
I can make a shop that sells pies and call it "Apple"
Well... Apple may come after your pie shop. You'll likely win if you have the resources to fight it.
Monster Cable, they fight anyone who uses the word "monster" including mini golf places
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/98013289
Tldr, monster Cable is ran by shit humans who like to litigate.
Monster Energy Drink are also litigious assholes
https://gamerant.com/monster-energy-drink-indie-game-developer-lawsuit/
I'd like to see them fight each other in court. I think that would be interesting.
Your trademark is protected only in the field you're in, but if you're a widely known brand, and can prove it, you usually have some special protection, allowing you to prevent others from using it in all fields.
why litigate when you can just send pie
pipe bomb flavor
Someone was able to trademark the word "Apple", so that's not so surprising
Twice.
And when Apple violated the agreement they made with Apple Music not to enter each other's industries (Apple Records couldn't sell tech and Apple Computers couldn't sell music), they successfully argued in court that iTunes wasn't selling music, but digital downloads...
How stupid must the court be to agree that Apple music isn't about selling music...
Which, for me, also falls under "why the heck was this legal at any time?"
Because unless you want every company to be a random Amazon brand or initialism, that's how it kinda has to be, and it works fine until one company gains so much market share the word starts being associated with only them.
Think of like, Target or Shell. Both are huge companies, but their fields are narrow. You might confuse a Target named restaurant or pharmacy to be the Target, but probably not much more. And if it doesn't have anything to do with oil or gas, it's almost certainly not that Shell.
Apple is just so huge I wouldn't be surprised if at this point people think of iPhones while buying lunch. And even they started as "Apple Computers, inc", because they wouldn't have gotten just "Apple" if they had tried.
Gosh if only Meta hd money for lawyers, they could squish this like a bug. Oh, yeah. They do have money for lawyers. Tons of it.
Are you sure UK court allows it ? Because they filed in UK.
I don’t know anything about UK law but in my observations, giant corporations with tons of cash and armies of
lawyerssolicitors do what they want. I could be wrong but it is just my cynical view, not legal advice.UK has a fairer legal system overall, but Meta will delay, delay, delay to avoid accountability and keep using the Threads name for the next umpteen years, and at some point the original owner of the trademark will settle for a nice payday (though nothing like what they'd win if they beat Meta's team of lawyers... which won't happen).
What??? I suppose it depends on certain contexts, but I wouldn't say overall. Super injuctions are a very obvious one. Also, just lack of constitutional protections.
Depressing that people treat money winning over justice as a given. There is realism, and then there's defeatism.
There's no love lost between me and Meta, but I'm just gon' leave this here:
Against Intellectual Monopoly
Your link doesn't work for me. Is this the same?
https://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/docs/against-intellectual-monopoly.pdf
Yes
Does it actually talk about Trademark or is it just about Patents and Copyright? Despite all three being different types of IP, Trademark serves a different purpose them the other two. It's essentially just about preventing Corporate Identity Theft. It's why it's only one that's supposed to last forever.
Fun fact: Google has to pay royalties to Windsor Castle since they had a Keep product first.
Well can't they just call it Meta Threads or Threads by Meta if it isn't already, and nothing has to change.
Not an expert on trademark law, but I think "Threads by Meta" would not work as the main part of that name would still be "Threads", "Meta Threads" could work, but if they'd make the "Meta" part not prominent in the branding then again it would probably be considered as only "Threads".
Not an expert either, and I'm definitely not a lawyer. But I did take an elective class in uni on IPR.
Generally you can have two types of trademarks. You can use graphics as your trademark or a word. And your trademark must be unique to be defendable.
The word can't be something that is already in use, if you want to register it as a wordmark. Ie you can't register the word "beer" and market beer under that trademark. What you can register is alternative spelling or your logo.
The word "threads" is a word that was used previously. It has a meaning already. So you can't register it as a wordmark.
This is one of the reasons why alphabet really hates that people use the word "google" as a verb, or LEGO that people call the bricks "legos", as it diminishes the trademarkability of the word and thus makes defending the trademark harder.
If both companies tries to claim the word "threads" they'll have a pretty weak case. While I don't know exactly what this is about, I suspect that the headline doesn't give the full picture of the dispute.
So what you're saying is they can rename it threadz. You're hired!
Why do you think that so many companies have ordinary sounding names with weird spelling? Sure, it communicates "We're hip and creative", but it's definitely also a trademark thing.
It depends. Apple is a valid trademark for a computers/electronics company, despite being a common name. It wouldn't work if you tried to trademark it as an apple pie brand however.
I assume whoever owns this threads trademark is in the software business too, they may have a valid claim if so.
Threads are a software concept dating back to at least 1967, and “software” is such a broad industry that I wouldn’t expect such a generic term to be able to apply to it in its entirety. Given that their (the plaintiff’s, not Meta’s) specific niche is messaging, where “thread” is another generic term (e.g., a “thread of discussion”) it seems doubly problematic as a trademark.
That all said, this lawsuit is in the UK, and they don’t even have attorneys over there (they have “barristers” and “solicitors”) and I have no clue if the same trademark standards apply.
In the US, another barrier would be the target audience. Threads by Meta is a B2C social media app; Threads by the Thread Company is a B2B corporate search index for internal messaging. Trademark dilution isn’t relevant - Threads wasn’t a famous brand before - and trademark infringement is based on the likelihood of customer confusion. Is it likely that a business professional - the sort of person who would be purchasing the B2C service - would confuse it with the social media app? I don’t think so, but that’s up to the legal system to decide.
would the enforceability of a trademark in this situation not also depend on whether an average person could easily distinguish the meta threads app from the other company? It's been a while since I took this class and admittedly it was for non-majors but the way it was explained to us is that you can open a used car lot called "McDonald's", you just can't sell burgers or lead people to believe that the burger joint is now selling used cars.
Probably, I don't know, TBH the elective course I took was single week of summer school, 2 ECTS points, passed by attendance. And it was around 2010.
That would be the sensible approach, but some executive is propably throwing tantrum because of their injured pride. I will be surprised if they just comply.
There's another threads too that my company used to use for internal posts (referenced in the article): https://threads.com/
Interesting that they managed to keep the .com name
Poor lads probably got insane amounts of traffic
LMAO; Fuck you Facebook!
Where have I seen this before? Oh yeah: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_Games
They'll be fine.
I'm sure Meta will either pay them out or bankrupt them in court.
Isn't this just business news? Where's the tech?
I wonder if Posts is taken....... lol Twitter switched to one letter. I kind of prefer the made up ethnically ambiguous names than the short ones.
I mean ... could they just use Twitter since that's not in use any more?
Elon still owns the Twitter trademark, and can sue if anyone tries to use it.
Doesn't Zuck the trademark to X, or was that just a joke going around?
Meta, Microsoft and literally dozens more, quite a few in fields that can already be argued overlap with Twitter and even more are going to keep popping up as Musk adds features to his "everything app". His only defence is probably going to be arguing nobody should be able to own a single letter trademark which would be hilarious. And absolutely disasterous to him.
Not to be confused with the movie of the same name that, unlike Meta's service, made me a miserable drunk
I'm sure Meta Legal knew and would deal with it when the time came.
Even the name Meta was trademarked by others and they paid a lot for the rights to use it
What a disaster
again? didnt they have to pay that woman who was regged as meta on insta aswell? like there is nothing at all original about marcs "ideas".
Bad move Lizard King
quick reptile tongue slurp
New name: "Y"
Zuckbot just got his ass kicked lol. 🤣
Yeah. The group making billions in profit every quarter is sure getting their ass kicked. Facebook is dying too, right?
I don't like Meta, but this is fucking ridiculous. You can't just trademark a word.
Yes you can, that is the definition of what a trademark is.
Could you imagine 20 different brands of Coke on the shelf?
The usage is specific to a market, however. For example, Delta Airlines and Delta Faucets. Both trademark "Delta."
Delta coffee
I see tugas are in the place. Nice.
So you could hava "Delta decent airlines" and "Delta fucking shit piss-stained seats threadbare aircraft $15 50ml Coke cans" then?
Totally different market sectors.
Yes because that's exactly how it is in Germany. Coke isn't a trademark. CokaCola is.
Ever been to the south? Coke is literally the term for all soda. Can I get an orange coke?
There's colloquial use, what you're talking about, and then there's the actual branding on the product and the marketing. Only the company with the trademark can use the trademarked work on the product and in their marketing.
Another example of the south being the actual worst.
You literally can. That's what trade marks are.
You can't copyright a word. You can't patent a word. But you can trademark a word. Trademarking a word gives you the exclusive right to use that word to identify your products but only within the specific market it is registered in.
A few more examples of trade marked words, apple, meta, cherry, target, zoom.
Are any of those trade names invalid simply because they are preexisting words? No. That's trademark law.
Meta will disclaim the word Threads because it is too generic. So you can trademark whatever you want, but when someone comes along and wants to use it, if you've trademarked something generic, like Threads, then you go to court and presumably have them rule whether or not you can use it. And that probably will happen.
According to Trademark law in many places you can.
Generally, you can only enforce your trademark (successfully) if the infringing group is in the same industry. So if I sold an educational service or toilet bowl cleaner called Apple the tech and music giant can't go after me for trademark infringement, though for music, computer tech and software they would have a case.
I agree, but tell that to Rockstar.
EDIT: I assume the downvoters aren’t familiar with Rockstar suing every indie game dev who released a game with “Monster” or “Monsters” in the title.
I can make it worse. Let's call it Yarn now. Also, let's downvote my comment. I've ran out of good ideas.
Well everyone, you can reach on lanyards.app @bitwolf
Eh it's such a genetic term trademark arguments are hard to make here. Also their completely different niches. Boring corporate bs thats only making news because people (rightfully) hate Metas Threads.
Wholly incorrect. I work in trademark law and yeah you have no idea what you're talking about.
So... hypothetically, what if I've already used his comment as legal advice to launch my social network, "PepSi"?
Is DrMoose on the hook for damages, to me? What are my options here?
I don't agree with the one you're replying to, but trademark is usually bound to a sector. I'm pretty sure Pepsi trademarked all sectors known to mankind, but many companies don't do that. If I start a bakery called FooBarBaz I can trademark that just fine even if there's a software company called FooBarBaz that trademarked the name only for software.
Found the dev.
It's lemmy, I think there was around an 80% chance anyway...
So you don't foresee any legal issues with pursuing my dream of opening a chain of nail salons called "British Petroleum"?
Just Dew It
That's a great slogan, really sums up the energy of the PepSi social network. I've just filed to trademark it.
What if down the road I wanted to use that slogan for my landscaping company, NiKE.
Would that be an issue?
Depends... Did BP trademark it every which way to Sunday (say for multiple industries/uses)?
I never claimed anything about the law just commented how uninteristing and dumb this whole thing is.
I'm so confident in your legal analysis, which is clearly well thought out and legally sound, that I've launched my new social network "PepSi".
Gotta say, I'm feeling good about this one. No way it goes tits up.
How do I sign up? Is it still invite-only?