1089
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
1089 points (98.3% liked)
Technology
59087 readers
3284 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
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
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)_/¯
Threadstropolis.
Threads a go-go
And disapprove of the name only because that sounds pretty cool
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
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.
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?
Basically a company had a patent of a barely similar device that shouldve fallen under common sense patent law and had zero plans on produce/selling the product. They’re basically just a company thats the patent equivalent of landlords
It's called patent troll.
They should call it Y.