Meta given 30 days to cease using the name Threads by company that trademarked it 11 years ago::undefined
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.
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:
- Small co files against large co for using same name
- Large co produces huge response document which is all piss and wind
- Small co says they can’t afford the costs to answer each point
- Judge permits Small Co to use Legal Aid.
- Large co offers to settle. (E.g. you’re a 3 person sandwich shop. They offer you £10m. No more work, no more hassle)
If Small Co is energetic, young and courageous, they may choose to fight to the death. But Legal Aid has a limit…
Threads is a cloud-based intelligent message hub that captures, transcribes, and organizes all of a company’s digital messages, emails, and phone calls into one easily searchable database.
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.
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”.
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.”
Could you imagine 20 different brands of Coke on the shelf?
Yes because that’s exactly how it is in Germany. Coke isn’t a trademark. CokaCola is.
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.
Ever been to the south? Coke is literally the term for all soda. Can I get an orange coke?
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Another example of the south being the actual worst.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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LMAO; Fuck you Facebook!
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.
I never claimed anything about the law just commented how uninteristing and dumb this whole thing is.
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.
So you don’t foresee any legal issues with pursuing my dream of opening a chain of nail salons called “British Petroleum”?
Depends… Did BP trademark it every which way to Sunday (say for multiple industries/uses)?
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?
FooBarBaz
Found the dev.
It’s lemmy, I think there was around an 80% chance anyway…
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?
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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
Seems clear cut and Meta will likely have to change the name.
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.
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.
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)_/¯
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
Threadstropolis.
Threads a go-go
And disapprove of the name only because that sounds pretty cool
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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?
It’s called patent troll.
They should call it Y.
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
Completely forgot Threads was even a thing.
So did everyone else lol
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
Where have I seen this before? Oh yeah: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_Games
They’ll be fine.
It appears that Meta was aware of Threads before launching its platform of the same name. Company lawyers made four offers to purchase the domain ‘threads.app’ from Threads Software Ltd from April 2023, all of which were declined. Meta announced Threads in July 2023, the same time that the British company says it was removed from Facebook.
Classic Facebook douchebaggery.
Didn’t they do the same thing to Meta? Aren’t they being sued now?
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Looks like it’s his only original idea.
I mean, it is a very descriptive name for a social media commenting app. Im not surprised he went with it.
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What a disaster
There’s no love lost between me and Meta, but I’m just gon’ leave this here:
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.
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.
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).
UK has a fairer legal system overall,
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.
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.
Depressing that people treat money winning over justice as a given. There is realism, and then there’s defeatism.
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??
It appears that Meta was aware of Threads before launching its platform of the same name. Company lawyers made four offers to purchase the domain ‘threads.app’ from Threads Software Ltd from April 2023, all of which were declined. Meta announced Threads in July 2023, the same time that the British company says it was removed from Facebook.
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
