Meta given 30 days to cease using the name Threads by company that trademarked it 11 years ago::undefined
Bad move Lizard King
quick reptile tongue slurp
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?
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.
Elon still owns the Twitter trademark, and can sue if anyone tries to use it.
How about Xwitter?
Isn’t this just business news? Where’s the tech?
Where have I seen this before? Oh yeah: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_Games
They’ll be fine.
Well everyone, you can reach on lanyards.app @bitwolf
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
And disapprove of the name only because that sounds pretty cool
Threads a go-go
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.
If I was a judge I’d tell meta their attempt to buy what they wanted, then breaking IP law as soon as money couldn’t get what they wanted in hopes money in court would get them what they want is enough guilt for me. You really don’t need a degree in behavioral science to know a tantrum when you see one. This is a money tantrum by meta. Probably why im not a judge but hey, don’t tell me you wouldn’t enjoy a system that doesn’t give the benefit of the doubt to those that did everything to prove they’re irresponsible with said benefit.
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.
They should call it Y.
What’s the chrome cast one?
It’s called patent troll.
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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LMAO; Fuck you Facebook!
Completely forgot Threads was even a thing.
So did everyone else lol
What a disaster
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.
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.
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How do I sign up? Is it still invite-only?
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.
FooBarBaz
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”?
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?
I never claimed anything about the law just commented how uninteristing and dumb this whole thing is.
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 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.
