I thought stuff like “Explain Like I’m Five” and “AMA” was proprietary to the community, or at least the Reddit community, not Reddit as a company.
I remember when r/natureisfuckinglit was created, it’s relatively new sub, there was a cool photo on r/earthporn, some dude commented “nature is fucking lit”, someone else commented there should be a sub for this and the next person created the sub
That dude signed a contract, said anything he writes belongs to Reddit in all mediums and in perpetuity.
I mean that would hardly hold up to a challenge fir inadequate consideration. The value of all intellectual property in perpetuity is easily worth far more than access to the reddit website.
Nah, you get to use the website. Access to a computer system in exchange for IP created with it is a pretty open and shut case. The value doesn’t have to be equal, it just can’t be unconscionable. Buyer beware.
Where does one mail a cease and desist for a non-centralized network?
I assume you’d go to the owner of the instance that hosts that particular community.
Torrents and Federated sites: they can’t give us all a speeding ticket if we’re all speeding
To yourself.
- RPAN (actual subreddit name is R/PAN but they messed up the word mark for the registration I think.)
They didn’t mess up, it was called RPAN from the start. And that’s something Reddit launched, so it makes sense they’d trademark it.
IANAL can anyone ELI5 do they have to try and defend these trademarks? And how would that look like, going after Lemmy communities for using TIL, etc?
IANAL
IANAL is a registered trademark of Reddit and Advance Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
Could simply be a case of protecting their largest assets incase someone big really did try to replace reddit.
my understanding (I’m just a tax guy, my brother’s the IP guy) is they have to defend the trademark or they lose it to genericism and saran wrap [edit fuck it’s cellophane]. I could be wrong though.
Wouldn’t these terms being commonly used there and other places like quora, X/twitter, lemmy, etc show that they are already common terms that aren’t viable as brand identifiers of Reddit itself? Which is what trademarks are for. To reduce brand confusion and ensure people can identify a product, good and/or service and know it’s from a source they associate it with.
E.g. Coca Cola is a good example of what you think of when you see the red can, the swirl, and the font with the lettering.
You see it and you know what you’re getting quality wise, etc.
Want a hoot? Go search for coke: https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/search/search-results It’s pretty fun.
Most aren’t for soda, since you aren’t going to confuse slag with a drink.
Trademarks are just for words. Trade dress is what you’re talking about, and it’s cognizance comes from the copyright laws.
yeah, it’s why they shouldn’t have been granted as trademarks, but what do I know I’m not an IP guy.
I don’t even think most of these would hold up in court unless they add “r/” in front of them. Reddit reserves the non-exclusive right to use user content however they want, and I don’t think this includes making user-submitted phrases their trademarks. I haven’t read the ToS though so another clause might reserve this right too. There might be a claim to words like “subreddit”, “r/” and “RPAN” and derivatives because they are based off the “Reddit” trademark.
I’m sure the fine upstanding folks working so earnestly as corporate lawyers will think of something. :D
…Isn’t… “Explain Like I’m Five” an Office reference first?
Unexpected !dundermifflin@lemm.ee
None of these would stand up to scrutiny in court.
This.
You can try to trademark a lot of things, doesn’t mean it will hold, especially if there have been prior uses (which there have been for just about all of them)
U.S. court system: “Providing a trademark for these would be an instance of gross negligence and general abuse of copyright law to provide a corporation with no genuine claim to these references carte blanche use and legal guarantee of sole ownership of them. So we’re going to do that because we’re functionally an engine of capital and not actually a mechanism of justice.”
I think they’d have a hard time defending some but not all of those. I’m sure many of the Redditors heavily involved in those subs, including the mods, have no idea, though!
Sounds like a lawsuit that should definitely happen!
One more reason I’m done with Reddit.
Time to switch to Explain Me Like I’m Six then
Explain like im still a redditor
Did Spez trademark “im just a little shit pig” too?
Explain Like I’m Steve “Jailbait” Huffman
Did he actually defend that subreddit or is it more of a general “this happened and he didn’t do anything about it until he had no choice?”
I like to err on the side of caution and assume that he contributed CP, just to be safe.
He was added as a mod pretty much for shits and giggles, he didn’t do any actual moderation. Still, he allowed the sub and many others like it, so very much the second option.
If you needed any further proof that stock prices are mostly bullshit, check out the graph for RDDT.
It’s interesting and depressing to me that reddit as a corporate entity is the antithesis of what 90% of active redditors would claim themselves to be. Yet they stay there and participate anyway.
Wow, reddit is actually up 23 percent year to date. Boy, if I needed any more evidence we were in an economic bubble than that…
Kind of a metaphor for modern politics if you think about it. Not until people are getting drafted to fight for oil or fresh water will younger people give a shit and change a thing. “My vote doesn’t matter.” Vs. every single conservative person in their country showing up to vote as if their ill-gotten gains depend on it.
“You made this?”
“I made this.”
AM I THE ASSHOLE?
Yes.
Apparently there was a trademark problem with WALLSTREETBETS at one point. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/reddit-sued-wallstreetbets-trademark-settlement-1235327626
Can’t you just put /My website name after ?
Imagine the balls it takes to take user-created forum names and register them as trademarks.