As amusing as it is to see Elon fail, letters like “X” shoud not be trademarkable. Just one indicator that we’re truly reaching capitalist extremism levels of insanity.
Also, how the hell could Microsoft get a patent for X in 2003 when X has been around since 1984, and is pretty much a direct competitor? This makes no sense at all.
Trademarks can apply to different areas. In this case, Microsoft’s trademark is for services related to online chat and gaming, not for something like a window manager.
Makes sense I guess. Somehow also makes the trademark even more absurd.
Reminds me a little of Apple v. Apple Records, and how Apple promised never too use their brand to enter into the music industry (like they later did with iTunes anyway).
In 1991, Apple Computer made an agreement to pay Apple Records $26 million in exchange for letting Apple Computer use the “Apple” trademark for music. But that was long before iTunes, they wanted the Apple trademark for their computer chimes. Apple Records agreed to let Apple Computer use the Apple trademark for music as long as it did not “package, sell or distribute physical music materials.”
Much later, iTunes was developed and Apple Records sued Apple Computer. Eventually a judge sided with Apple Computer, pointing out that iTunes did not package, sell or distribute physical music materials. Thus, Apple Records couldn’t get another bite of that Apple…
The law is a weapon of the rich. You don’t have to be right, you just have to be able to afford out-lawyering your competition. Patents are especially revolting.
Of course, my question was rhetorical. I guess it didn’t come out so clearly considering it’s also, at least in theory, a damned good question.
It was probably clear enough, you just caught me half-asleep and unmedicated. I really dislike patents.
“You better not touch the F word! Call of Duty did it first!”
Welp. I can see it happening.
How is Xorg a “direct competitor” to Microsoft? Especially Microsoft’s trademark to X in the gaming market where they own the Xbox and Xorg doesn’t participate at all?
Trademarks protect consumers by preventing fraud and misleading naming. It makes perfect sense that Microsoft owns X in the given market space due to the enormous prevalence of Xbox. Their first console was literally X-shaped and it would be bad for consumers for anyone to be able to make the “X-station” or “X-cube” or some such.
Trademarks only cover very significant uses. Microsoft can (and apparently did) trademark X in connection to the Xbox, so competitors can’t make a game console called an XStation or PlayStation X, but people not making video game consoles aren’t affected.
[Edit: Man, Lemmy is weird. I deleted this comment right after posting it because I thought it was redundant. I only undeleted it because I saw it was the top-rated comment in its sub-thread.]
You can also protect colors. Like there is a defined “target red” and “home depot orange” (probably a twitter blue that I guess will be up for grabs soon). You could use that orange to open, say, a day-care, hair salon, or auto-shop, but not a hardware store. Basically if you can show it would cause consumer confusion you can protect it.
Trademarks are a government-enforced (i.e. publicly-mandated) monopoly, which is fundamentally antithetical to capitalism.
Capitalism: “an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.”
For sure, there are many shades of grey to be had here, and the world has 0 purely capitalist societies (in fact, such a society is inherently impossible). But every time the public controls trade and industry, e.g. when enforcing trademark law, that isn’t capitalism.
Private property laws are a government-enforced (i.e. publicly-mandated) style of ownership.
Fure sure, there are many shades of grey to be had here, but Elon Musk owning Twitter is the ultimate form of communism.
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Also X, the rapper, who’s “gonna give it to yuh.”
RIP
Did he die?
Couple years ago, yeah. Damn time flies.
Also X, the band from Los Angeles.
Also The XX, which is at least 2.times better than
twitterX
Well technically he went by DMX, but hes dead now so its moot anyway.
Also Xzibit lol
Yo dawg, we heard you like X…
There’s also Apple’s OS X, which was recently renamed to macos but which might have some remaining legal basis.
Also X (video game series).
Also vin diesel might be chiming in
Doctor X … will build a creature …
Alphabet also has X , the “moonshot factory”
Mr. Musk? I’ve got one Fox Mulder here, he’s here about some, um, files?
“You can’t own letters, man” -Elon, probably
“But I own the website! That’s no fair!”
It’s not the letter x it’s a Unicode symbol that looks like the letter x.
Xehanort literally malding right now
He already lost that fight to Mercedes for the letter E.
“I can, but that’s because I’m not a penniless hippie.” Also Elon, probably
i thought it was google tryin to copyright the alphabet
Pretty sure Google owns that.
I’m glad we’re currently on a good news streak. Those climate change articles were weighing on me.
What about the Malcolm X Estate, do they have a say in this?
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Make it double X’s for extra “salt to the fire” points.
The X-box. X.org, the X files… and now, simply… X.
Folks really love the X letter for some reason.
It’s used a lot for spot-marking.
Oh yeah. X marks the spot, etc.
Theres also three X’s which means… uhhmmm… “that”.
Theres also three X’s which means… uhhmmm… “that”.
Triple distilled moonshine?!
This guy drunks
Xander Zone.
Xucking xour xom?
Professor Utonium is also gonna sue Elon for the Element X trademark
At this point it wouldn’t surprise me if Musk decided on X because he thinks he’s the incarnation of Malcolm.
smdh
Why does his face remind me of the Phantom of the Opera? Maybe there will be an unfortunate chandelier falling incident.
One of the best damn openings ever.
I want Musk to lose but I hate the idea of a single letter being copyright.
Trademark, not copyright. It means that you can’t make something and call it “X” if there’s any chance that your “X” and their “X” might get mixed up. Google ran into this same problem when they created “Alphabet” - it was already a trademark of some German car manufacturer (probably Audi or BMW), but the court ruled that “Alphabet the car company” and “Alphabet the online services company” are far enough apart that the average user probably won’t confuse one for the other (although the Dove soap and Dove chocolate makes me doubt it). Twitter and Microsoft both offer online services. It might be enough of an overlap to constitute a trademark violation.
Oh damn, is that why chocolates have been tasting so weird lately? Ig I’ve been eating soap!
Copyright and trademarks are different things. In this case it looks like it applies mainly to the Xbox “X” logo like is seen on this (hilarious) page of the filing and is only for things related to messaging and gaming, so it’s not as broad as it sounds. Based on a cursory look at Google results from before July 1st, I can’t find any examples of Microsoft actually suing anyone for using the letter X, either.
This is my first thought. How does a company own a single letter? Why is this allowed?
What do you think is a reasonable cutoff for a trademark?
5 letters? 3? 2?
A full word that you made up.
Abstractly, whatever isn’t generic enough that multiple companies could want the name. For example, you shouldn’t be able to name an online chatroom company something like “Chat” and expect to have the trademark enforced.
Idk how to make it more concrete.
Love your username!!!
I thought it was nigh impossible to trademark a letter?
I saw a tweet from the founder of xe.com who literally used the same logo in the 90s and he discussed the challenges in globally trademarking a single letter.
Both aspects were giant cans of worms for El Musky.
Yeah definitely don’t need to check that out beforehand
🤣
I’m just here for his ass getting handed to him
Hard to tell if he’s winning or losing. If he’s being incentivized to destroy the integrity of a mainstream information-sharing platform, he’s done well. If he in any way wanted to run the company, he’s done laughably bad. I guess time will tell
I’ve always been kind of tin-foil-hatty about that. Like there’s no way he can actually fucking suck this much at this, right? It really seems like somebody paid him to take down a major information sharing platform that helps to further protests and other organized dissent.
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So does that make Elon Musk an X-Offender?