this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
122 points (87.7% liked)

Today I Learned

17813 readers
328 users here now

What did you learn today? Share it with us!

We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.

** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**



Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Partnered Communities

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] zylinderhut@feddit.de 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I'm not sure you are right. There seem to be an awful lot of lawyers phrasing it less clearly.

Trademarks require constant vigilance. The moment you let your guard down, there's a chance that someone else might swoop in and use your trademark without permission. This unauthorized usage could lead to confusion among customers and weaken the association between the trademark and the company it represents. Therefore, defending your trademark should be a top priority.

Source

This might be done on purpose of course to attract clients.

I don't think kik was worried about that. It's more likely they were bullying the guy into giving up the package name.

That might be true regardless of copyright law :)

[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

It's been a few years since I dug through trademark law trying to find an answer to this question, but from my understanding, as long as the trademark isn't abandoned, doesn't become genericized, and is renewed, it doesn't have to be strictly enforced through litigation.

You only really need to enforce your trademark when there's a chance of it causing confusion about whether goods produced by some other party are actually produced by the trademark holder (which is the scenario your quote is talking about). Take "Apple," for example. I can't sell any software or electronics with the name "Apple" on it without infringing on Apple, Inc.'s trademark, but I can sell "Farmer Tim's Golden Delicious Apples" without issue. If Apple tried to enforce their trademark on a box of apples, they wouldn't be successful. If they tried to enforce their trademark on Tim Apple's iJuicer Pro, they probably would succeed.

Anyway, I think a lot of the confusion about this comes from trademark law being oversimplified into the phrase "use it or lose it." That's strictly true when it comes to actually using the trademark, but it's not actually a requirement to liberally enforce it.

That might be true regardless of copyright law :)

A sad truth. You don't need to win when you can bury your opposition in legal costs (or threats of).

[–] Aatube@kbin.social 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I just had a thought: is it legal for lawyers to say half-truths to get clients to use them more and thus earn more money?

[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

That's how you get disbarred for misconduct.

I'm sure it violates other professional conduct rules, but at the very least, intentionally misleading a client or omitting information would likely be considered a lack of competence.

A lawyer shall provide competent representation to a client. Competent representation requires the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.

[–] zylinderhut@feddit.de 1 points 9 months ago

Thanks for your reply. I'm inclined to believe you, as it seems more likely that this was a case of corporate bullshit and not a case of "alas, our hands are tied".