It appears that Meta was aware of Threads before launching its platform of the same name. Company lawyers made four offers to purchase the domain 'threads.app' from Threads Software Ltd from April 2023, all of which were declined. Meta announced Threads in July 2023, the same time that the British company says it was removed from Facebook.
Classic Facebook douchebaggery.
Didn't they do the same thing to Meta? Aren't they being sued now?
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
Seems clear cut and Meta will likely have to change the name.
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)_/¯
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.
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.
I don’t know about UK trademark law, but I would imagine that, like with other countries, using a similar or identical name is okay, but only if you’re in a totally different industry. The original threads is also a messaging product, which doesn’t bode well for a lawsuit.
I imagine they thought they could just force a smaller company’s hand. Meta’s marketing, e-staff, and legal team are a bunch of corporate bullies.
Threads is a cloud-based intelligent message hub that captures, transcribes, and organizes all of a company's digital messages, emails, and phone calls into one easily searchable database.
B2B is a completely different marketplace than B2C, and “internal search index of company’s digital messages” is a different industry than “social media app.”
The company’s own trademark registration indicates the trademark applies to “computer software, software and apparatus for the extraction of business information and knowledge.” That doesn’t sound like a social media app to me, either.
It is too bad Meta couldn't afford a lawyer to do a search for trademarks and copyrights. Really shame.
Did you even read the article??
It appears that Meta was aware of Threads before launching its platform of the same name. Company lawyers made four offers to purchase the domain 'threads.app' from Threads Software Ltd from April 2023, all of which were declined. Meta announced Threads in July 2023, the same time that the British company says it was removed from Facebook.
They literally made an offer to buy the domain Threads.app 4 times and got rejected.
It was sarcasm. Meta has lots of money.
And then figured they'd be fine if they deleted their Facebook account. If your Facebook account gets deleted you get deleted in real life, after all.
You think they were unaware?
I don't know which concerns me more: That Meta gets their asses kicked, or why the f-ck someone was able to trademark the word "Threads".
You don't trademark the word "threads", you trademark it within the context of the industry you're in
I can make a shop that sells pies and call it "Apple"
Well... Apple may come after your pie shop. You'll likely win if you have the resources to fight it.
Monster Cable, they fight anyone who uses the word "monster" including mini golf places
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/98013289
Tldr, monster Cable is ran by shit humans who like to litigate.
Someone was able to trademark the word "Apple", so that's not so surprising
Twice.
And when Apple violated the agreement they made with Apple Music not to enter each other's industries (Apple Records couldn't sell tech and Apple Computers couldn't sell music), they successfully argued in court that iTunes wasn't selling music, but digital downloads...
How stupid must the court be to agree that Apple music isn't about selling music...
Gosh if only Meta hd money for lawyers, they could squish this like a bug. Oh, yeah. They do have money for lawyers. Tons of it.
Are you sure UK court allows it ? Because they filed in UK.
I don’t know anything about UK law but in my observations, giant corporations with tons of cash and armies of ~~lawyers~~ solicitors do what they want. I could be wrong but it is just my cynical view, not legal advice.
There's no love lost between me and Meta, but I'm just gon' leave this here:
Fun fact: Google has to pay royalties to Windsor Castle since they had a Keep product first.
Well can't they just call it Meta Threads or Threads by Meta if it isn't already, and nothing has to change.
Not an expert on trademark law, but I think "Threads by Meta" would not work as the main part of that name would still be "Threads", "Meta Threads" could work, but if they'd make the "Meta" part not prominent in the branding then again it would probably be considered as only "Threads".
Not an expert either, and I'm definitely not a lawyer. But I did take an elective class in uni on IPR.
Generally you can have two types of trademarks. You can use graphics as your trademark or a word. And your trademark must be unique to be defendable.
The word can't be something that is already in use, if you want to register it as a wordmark. Ie you can't register the word "beer" and market beer under that trademark. What you can register is alternative spelling or your logo.
The word "threads" is a word that was used previously. It has a meaning already. So you can't register it as a wordmark.
This is one of the reasons why alphabet really hates that people use the word "google" as a verb, or LEGO that people call the bricks "legos", as it diminishes the trademarkability of the word and thus makes defending the trademark harder.
If both companies tries to claim the word "threads" they'll have a pretty weak case. While I don't know exactly what this is about, I suspect that the headline doesn't give the full picture of the dispute.
There's another threads too that my company used to use for internal posts (referenced in the article): https://threads.com/
Interesting that they managed to keep the .com name
LMAO; Fuck you Facebook!
I'm sure Meta will either pay them out or bankrupt them in court.
Isn't this just business news? Where's the tech?
I wonder if Posts is taken....... lol Twitter switched to one letter. I kind of prefer the made up ethnically ambiguous names than the short ones.
I mean ... could they just use Twitter since that's not in use any more?
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
