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
3432 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
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.