https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-microsoft-x-trademark
There's another big problem with Elon Musk's Twitter rebrand: Microsoft owns the trademark to the title "X." In a word: lol.
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.
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.
One could not imagine Linux without X11 in 2003. And in 2003, the situation between Microsoft and Linux was rather tense.
That said, I managed to somehow forget about Xbox. I agree it makes sense that Sony couldn't launch an "X console" with a gigantic X on the side.
So yes, I want thinking it through. I do however think that using this trademark against X.xom would be ill conceived, no matter how much I hate Musk. If they start moving into gaming it might be different though, so fair enough.
Thanks for making me think it through more! :)
"You better not touch the F word! Call of Duty did it first!"
Welp. I can see it happening.
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.
Aside from Microsoft and apparently Facebook, there's also X the classic Unix display protocol, aka X11.
Well technically he went by DMX, but hes dead now so its moot anyway.
Also Xzibit lol
There’s also Apple’s OS X, which was recently renamed to macos but which might have some remaining legal basis.
Basically, it's a legal minefield that is almost indefensible. Anyone want to make a Mastodom X Window client with a web access version of it?
I’m glad we’re currently on a good news streak. Those climate change articles were weighing on me.
Trademarks are very narrow. From my quick search Microsoft has 'X' marks in relation to Excel and Xbox.
Meta's trademarks actually has the class, 'Online social networking services,' that will overlap with Twitter's new name.
From what I understand, MS owns it in regards to gaming, and Meta owns it in regards to social media.
Probably in different industries. I saw the MS patent is for game related stuff. I would assume metas is for social media stuff, or some other field they're involved in.
Trademark, not patent. I wouldn't normally correct you but there seems to be a whole lot of misunderstanding in this thread about the categories of intellectual property.
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.
Sort of. It's how some fonts render that character. I've noticed it tends to look like the Twitter logo with Android's default font, but it's noticeably different in Firefox on Windows.
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.
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.
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.
The X-box. X.org, the X files... and now, simply... X.
Folks really love the X letter for some reason.
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.
Ah, excellent. I've been waiting for the IP fallout from this dumpster fire... Here we go 😊
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.