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.

  • @Crampon
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    1234 months ago

    Did Spez trademark “im just a little shit pig” too?

    • @Skepticpunk
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      514 months ago

      Explain Like I’m Steve “Jailbait” Huffman

      • @[email protected]
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        94 months ago

        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?”

  • NutWrench
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    524 months ago

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

  • Queen HawlSera
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    474 months ago

    …Isn’t… “Explain Like I’m Five” an Office reference first?

    • themeatbridge
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      314 months ago

      None of these would stand up to scrutiny in court.

      • @rwhitisissle
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        144 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
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          13 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.

      • @[email protected]
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        94 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)

  • @[email protected]
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    384 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
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      4 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
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        234 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.

    • Madbrad200
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      94 months ago

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

    • Flying Squid
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      44 months ago

      IANAL

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

  • @theedqueen
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    364 months ago

    Wasn’t ELI5 a line from the Office?

    • @[email protected]
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      344 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.

      • @Jarix
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        84 months ago

        Eli5 went private?!

  • Boozilla
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    354 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.

    • 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
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      44 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
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    284 months ago

    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

      • CheezyWeezle
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        64 months ago

        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.

        • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】
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          -14 months ago

          Nah, you get to use the website. Access to a computer system in exchange for IP created with it is a pretty open and shut case. The value doesn’t have to be equal, it just can’t be unconscionable. Buyer beware.

    • @BottleOfAlkahest
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      144 months ago

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

      • @mlg
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        104 months ago

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

  • @lunarul
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    194 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
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    184 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.

    • @[email protected]
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      34 months ago

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

  • @Fredselfish
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    174 months ago

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