this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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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.

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[–] Crampon@lemmy.world 123 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Did Spez trademark "im just a little shit pig" too?

[–] Skepticpunk@lemmy.world 48 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Explain Like I'm Steve "Jailbait" Huffman

[–] dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net 9 points 5 months ago (3 children)

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?”

[–] BassTurd@lemmy.world 16 points 5 months ago

I like to err on the side of caution and assume that he contributed CP, just to be safe.

[–] Skepticpunk@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 107 points 5 months ago

AM I THE ASSHOLE?

Yes.

[–] KevinCostner@kbin.run 89 points 5 months ago

"You made this?"

"I made this."

[–] NutWrench@lemmy.world 51 points 5 months ago

Imagine the balls it takes to take user-created forum names and register them as trademarks.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 47 points 5 months ago (2 children)

....Isn't.... "Explain Like I'm Five" an Office reference first?

[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 31 points 5 months ago (2 children)

None of these would stand up to scrutiny in court.

[–] rwhitisissle@lemmy.world 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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."

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[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 9 points 5 months ago

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)

[–] Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works 38 points 5 months ago (3 children)

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?

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 20 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world 22 points 5 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago

yeah, it's why they shouldn't have been granted as trademarks, but what do I know I'm not an IP guy.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

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.

[–] JustZ@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

Trademarks are just for words. Trade dress is what you're talking about, and it's cognizance comes from the copyright laws.

[–] Madbrad200@sh.itjust.works 9 points 5 months ago

Could simply be a case of protecting their largest assets incase someone big really did try to replace reddit.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

IANAL

IANAL is a registered trademark of Reddit and Advance Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

[–] theedqueen@lemmy.world 36 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Wasn’t ELI5 a line from the Office?

[–] Tower@lemm.ee 34 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Jarix@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

Eli5 went private?!

[–] Boozilla@lemmy.world 35 points 5 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Speculater@lemmy.world 13 points 5 months ago

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.

[–] rwhitisissle@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

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....

[–] maniel@sopuli.xyz 28 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] JustZ@lemmy.world 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

That dude signed a contract, said anything he writes belongs to Reddit in all mediums and in perpetuity.

[–] CheezyWeezle@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] Lexam@lemmy.ca 22 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Where does one mail a cease and desist for a non-centralized network?

[–] BottleOfAlkahest@lemmy.world 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I assume you'd go to the owner of the instance that hosts that particular community.

[–] mlg@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago

Torrents and Federated sites: they can't give us all a speeding ticket if we're all speeding

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[–] Blaze@reddthat.com 21 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Time to switch to Explain Me Like I'm Six then

[–] NotAFakeHumanoid@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

Explain like im still a redditor

[–] lunarul@lemmy.world 19 points 5 months ago
  • 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.

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] Fredselfish@lemmy.world 17 points 5 months ago

Nosleep is fucking podcast they can't own that name can they? Nor Shower thoughts and damn sure TIL.

[–] Jumpingspiderman@lemmy.world 14 points 5 months ago

One more reason I'm done with Reddit.

[–] Tag365@lemmy.world 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] Alice@hilariouschaos.com 3 points 5 months ago

Can't you just put /My website name after ?

[–] cultsuperstar@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Is it in the TOS somewhere that anything created or posted on their site essentially belongs to them?

[–] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 10 points 5 months ago

The POS are always in the TOS

[–] jqubed@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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!

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 4 points 5 months ago

Sounds like a lawsuit that should definitely happen!

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