1086
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
1086 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
59597 readers
3300 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
You literally can. That's what trade marks are.
You can't copyright a word. You can't patent a word. But you can trademark a word. Trademarking a word gives you the exclusive right to use that word to identify your products but only within the specific market it is registered in.
A few more examples of trade marked words, apple, meta, cherry, target, zoom.
Are any of those trade names invalid simply because they are preexisting words? No. That's trademark law.
Meta will disclaim the word Threads because it is too generic. So you can trademark whatever you want, but when someone comes along and wants to use it, if you've trademarked something generic, like Threads, then you go to court and presumably have them rule whether or not you can use it. And that probably will happen.