Reddit gay gamers to fight Gaymer trademark

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-01/25/reddit-gaymers

by jeffreyfox • 13 years ago

37 27 13 years ago

wired.co.uk

ck22• 13 years ago

I don't know whose side to take. Someone educate me?

Bandaid is trademarked and people use it all the time, xerox too.

Was the reddit group formed before 2007 ?

I noticed the other day my pillow has a trademark on the word "Jumbo". Where are the people getting upset about that?

Oh I see now from the EFF release:

As today's petition notes, the term "gaymer" had been in widespread use for years before Vizzini applied for a trademark. In fact, there's even a GaymerCon conference.

gabemart• 13 years ago

> Was the reddit group formed before 2007 ?

In early 2011, /r/gaymers had a mere 600 subscribers [1] so it was likely formed some time in 2010.

Custom subreddits were added in 2008 [2] which is thus the earliest possible point that /r/gaymers could have been founded.

However, there is certainly what I as a lay-person would call prior art.

There's a Yahoo! group for "gaymers" founded in 2000 [3].

    [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20110226103548/http://www.reddit.com/r/gaymers
    [2] http://blog.reddit.com/2008/01/new-features.html
    [3] http://games.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/gaymers/

ck22• 13 years ago

Ah well then no trademark should be allowed then.

That's obviously where he got the domain name idea then and did a trademark the following year.

Remember the days when you could find a word that wasn't registered as a domain?

Even the fact he went for the .org leads me to believe the .com had to be in use already. Yup, registered and paid parking since 2002. Interesting he didn't bother to try to use the trademark to grab the .com

deadairspace• 13 years ago

It says in the sidebar "a community for 2 years".

SEMW3• 13 years ago

If you don't know whose side to take in a trademark dispute, one heuristic is: default to whichever side is trying to get the trademark invalidated. Because getting a trademark invalidated doesn't stop you using it -- it just stops you from using the law to stop other using it.

BTW, the key point in trademarks isn't whether there's prior use, technically. It's whether there's customary use, and (independently) whether the mark is purely descriptive. Widespread prior use is just evidence of those. (N.B. that's in the EU - I assume US law is similar, but don't actually know).

> I noticed the other day my pillow has a trademark on the word "Jumbo". Where are the people getting upset about that?

People are getting upset of this because they identify as gaymers - it's something they are. The word gets tied up with the identity. So naturally they get upset if someone tries to (from their POV) take the word away from them.

h2s• 13 years ago

Smells like a shitstorm brewing. I'd advise him to walk away from this one quietly. There's a real risk of invoking the wrath of Reddit's Internet Hate Machine on this issue. All it'll take is a few links to hit the front page and this could very suddenly become a lot more hassle than a trademark is worth.

biot2• 13 years ago

Or license it to them for $1. The subreddit can then put a (R) sign next to it and say "Used under license from Chris Vizzini / gaymer.org". With some ingenuity, Vizzini could work with them to turn it into a community brand and make gaymer.org the central hub. Trying to fight the community rather than work with it is inconceivable!

uvdiv• 13 years ago

Reddit will not react well to demands for free advertising.

tech-no-logical4• 13 years ago

as someone who follows /r/gaymers I can say that this will _never_ be accepted by that community. the cease-and-desist mr. vizzini sent was seen as a sort of declaration of war, and mr. vizzini's posts on reddit only added to that feeling.

fitzpasd2• 13 years ago

I believe they had an agreement similar to this already (without the charge).

"...that the /gaymer sub-reddit had use of the word in exchange for a link to my site. Apparently that wasn’t enough for them because yesterday they filed a petition to have the trademark taken away." - Extract from a post by the trademarks owner.

Full post - http://www.gaymer.org/index.html/_/site-news/help-save-gayme...

tallanvor• 13 years ago

Well, the first part of the storm was quite a while ago when he first sent the C&D and it did make it to the front page. At the time he was running his site on a shared server. Needless to say, plenty of people visited his site and it was very quickly suspended by his provider. He tried to call it a DDOS attack and as I recall he had moved it to one of the providers that specializes in hosting porn sites and such that tend to get attacked a lot.

I'm guessing this has already cost him quite a bit of money, and if he ends up having to pay a lawyer to try and defend the trademark, it's going to get expensive very quickly. But some people would rather double down than accept that they might be better off letting something go.

eclipticplane• 13 years ago

Thanks to the EFF and everyone involved in this. Reddit itself is being very helpful in this, too.

Nursie• 13 years ago

Hmmm... is the trademark domain and/or country specific?

Because there's a cider company in the UK that has a claim to that name going back well over 150 years.

antihero• 13 years ago

It's a different "category". Like Apple (hardware) and Apple (records), it was okay for them to share the name until Apple (hardware) moved into the music business.

fitzpasd2• 13 years ago

I suggest people also read the trademark holders recent post on gaymer.org

http://www.gaymer.org/index.html/_/site-news/help-save-gayme...

tech-no-logical4• 13 years ago

... wherein mr. vizzini is the hero who personally wrested the term 'gaymer' from the evil claws of the bigoted internet. there's enogugh references from before 2003 to prove that this is a load of bs.

timdorr• 13 years ago

> Vizzini went on to add, "I had an idea 10 years ago, made it happen, put the money and hours into it, the idea picked up steam and I trademarked it. That's how the system works."

Holy shit. You're building a community, not a product. The two operate very differently and you're going to get nowhere if you treat it like a commodity. He should do the smart thing and license the trademark to /r/gaymers.

sergiotapia• 13 years ago

I side with Vizzini on this one. He trademarked it plain and simple and shouldn't be stripped of his trademark. I hope the Reddit community members lose this one.

It's not like the guy demanded they stop using the term, he even let them use his trademark on their subreddit. But for some people that's just not enough.

Best wishes to Vizzini.

---

> "The issue I have is when the Gaymer name is used. It takes 10 years of my work, money, blood, sweat and tears and directs it to another website. Trust me, there were many tears. When you have no idea about PHP/SQL and you have to figure out how to fix a database, you will end up in tears."

Yeah, I'd be pissed if some random internet mob wanted to strip me of something I built.

---

tech-no-logical4• 13 years ago

he initially demanded the subreddit change its name, which is technically hard to do, or so people from reddit said, which would mean the subreddit was to be deleted.

he was never to be 'stripped' of something he built, the site and the subreddit have existed side by side for years. even if he loses his trademark, his site will continue to exist, and he's free to try and monetize that to his heart's content.

also, the sob-story about php and mysql sounds a bit off since he uses Invision Powerboard to host the whole site.

newishuser• 13 years ago

A trademark is a legal monopoly on a name. The issue isn't whether he worked hard or not, it's whether he deserves to have a legal monopoly on the use of the word "Gaymer". As much as you argue "he trademarked it plain and simple" these people have the right to say "we don't think there should be a legal monopoly on that word, plain and simple."

People should really think twice about what they try to remove from the public domain. It's a bit selfish and arrogant to think you can own words like "Gaymer".

pdeuchler• 13 years ago

Completely agreed. It was incredibly selfish of Bill Gates to trademark "Windows", just like it was arrogant for Steve Jobs to trademark "Apple". I eat apples all the time! I look out windows all the time! These trademarks offend me.

These words should not be trademarked. Plain and simple.

SEMW3• 13 years ago

> He trademarked it plain and simple and shouldn't be stripped of his trademark.

Not much about the law is 'plain and simple'.

Being granted a trademark isn't very good evidence that you should have been granted a trademark. Trademark offices don't do hours of exhaustive research into whether a mark has become customary, or whatever. They don't have the resources.

The idea is, if the trademark holder threatens someone with a trademark that shouldn't have been granted, the person being threatened will then do the research, and will apply to the trademark office to have the TM invalidated. They can then look at the application and decide. Shifts the effort from the trademark office to the parties. That's why trademark offices have process to apply to invalidate a trademark. Which /r/gaymers is using as intended.

Think of it like this: if /r/gaymers do prevail, then that means that, in the trademark office's opinion, they were wrong to have granted Vizzini the trademark in the first place. Which means that the "He trademarked it plain and simple" argument is meaningless: it's right if Vizzini ends up keeping his trademark, it's wrong if he ends up losing it.

And as others have pointed out: Being "stripped" of a trademark isn't a punishment. It doesn't stop you using it. It just stops you from using the law to stop other using it.

(N.B. IANAL, and in particular I'm only familiar with EU trademark law. I'd be surprised if US law was that different, but I don't know for sure, so the above may not be accurate for US law).

Reddit gay gamers to fight Gaymer trademark

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