1087
Meta given 30 days to cease using the name Threads by company that trademarked it 11 years ago
(www.techspot.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
1087 points (98.3% liked)
Technology
59607 readers
3411 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.