Shocking News: Reddit has trademarks for forum names like "Explain Like I'm Five" registered on USPTO.
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 checked and I found at least those subreddit forum names were registered as trademarks.
- TODAY I LEARNED (TIL)
- SHOWERTHOUGHTS
- EXPLAIN LIKE I'M FIVE
- NOSLEEP
- AM I THE ASSHOLE?
- IAMA
- RPAN (actual subreddit name is R/PAN but they messed up the word mark for the registration I think.)
- ASK REDDIT (makes sense since this includes Reddit's name.)
- NATURE IS FUCKING LIT (I thought you couldn't register word marks with swearing but I guess I'm wrong. Must be only for offensive terms then...)
- ASK ME ANYTHING (yes somehow this "generic term" is a trademark now...")
- AMA
- ELI5
Also they have some trademark registration applications for WALLSTREETBETS that have not been finalized yet.
59 replies
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.
Thread from… wow, six months ago
Yes.
"You made this?"
"I made this."
Imagine the balls it takes to take user-created forum names and register them as trademarks.
Small, arrogant pig's balls
....Isn't.... "Explain Like I'm Five" an Office reference first?
None of these would stand up to scrutiny in court.
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 get the feeling that the US copyright is largely being operated on a pinky swear basis. For example - the current copyright on the original Bitcoin whitepaper is held by a well known con artist, simply because he was the first to register it.
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)
Unexpected [email protected]
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?
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.
yeah, it's why they shouldn't have been granted as trademarks, but what do I know I'm not an IP guy.
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.
Could simply be a case of protecting their largest assets incase someone big really did try to replace reddit.
IANAL is a registered trademark of Reddit and Advance Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
Wasn’t ELI5 a line from the Office?
Yup. That episode aired December 2008. r/explainlikeim5 was created in 2012. Can't tell when r/eli5 was created, as it's now private.
Eli5 went private?!
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.
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....
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.
Time to switch to Explain Me Like I'm Six then
Explain like im still a redditor
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.
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
Nosleep is fucking podcast they can't own that name can they? Nor Shower thoughts and damn sure TIL.
One more reason I'm done with Reddit.
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 ?
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!
Is it in the TOS somewhere that anything created or posted on their site essentially belongs to them?
The POS are always in the TOS
Some truly goofy goobers
Damn... Reddit is even shittier than I thought.
Wait.
The applications for "NOSLEEP" and "R/NOSLEEP" were filed by Reddit Inc in... August 3, 2018?
And "THE NO SLEEP PODCAST" by Creative Reason Media (the actual publishers of the podcast) was filed in August 5, 2016, but... got dismissed or abandoned?
...What?
Oh yea, I remember that site. You guys still getting emotional over it? Give it a clean break. The shit's poison. I know I shouldn't talk about an ex because people often get back together, but you can do it.
This is in a community specifically on the subject of Reddit.
Lol, my bad. I should have looked at that. No wonder there's no humor on what I said.
Well, you can block this community now. It's the reason why ![email protected] and others exist, to offload posts on annoyingly frequently discussed topics from general communities like ![email protected].
Good idea, thanks man
I getcha.
Gotta say - regardless of which community we’re on, this informative post raises valid and interesting questions about important laws in the United States.