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.

      • rwhitisissle@lemmy.world
        141·
        5 months ago

        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.”

        • deafboy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          5 months ago

          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.

      • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
        9·
        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)

    • Tower@lemm.ee
      34·
      5 months ago

      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.

  • Deceptichum@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    36·
    5 months ago

    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.worldEnglish
      201·
      5 months ago

      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
        23·
        5 months ago

        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.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      51·
      5 months ago

      IANAL

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

  • Boozilla@lemmy.worldEnglish
    35·
    5 months ago

    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.

    • 🇸‌🇵‌🇪‌🇨‌🇺‌🇱‌🇦‌🇹‌🇪‌🇷‌@lemmy.world
      141·
      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·
      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…

  • Lexam@lemmy.caEnglish
    231·
    5 months ago

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

  • lunarul@lemmy.world
    18·
    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
    17·
    5 months ago

    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.

    • uxia@midwest.socialEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      I’m sure the fine upstanding folks working so earnestly as corporate lawyers will think of something. :D