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
        101·
        6 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·
          6 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.

    • Tower@lemm.ee
      27·
      6 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
    27·
    6 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
      161·
      6 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
        15·
        6 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
      41·
      6 months ago

      IANAL

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

  • Boozilla@lemmy.worldEnglish
    26·
    6 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.

    • rwhitisissle@lemmy.world
      4·
      6 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…

  • lunarul@lemmy.world
    12·
    6 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.

  • jqubed@lemmy.world
    7·
    6 months ago

    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!

  • Tylerdurdon@lemmy.world
    524·
    6 months ago

    Oh yea, I remember that site. You guys still getting emotional over it? Give it a clean break. The shit’s poison. I know I shouldn’t talk about an ex because people often get back together, but you can do it.

    • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
      13·
      6 months ago

      I getcha.

      Gotta say - regardless of which community we’re on, this informative post raises valid and interesting questions about important laws in the United States.