Corporate America's Desperate Race To Trademark... Everything
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ธ.ค. 2023
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There is a desperate race to trademark… everything going on right now, and it’s going to cost you dearly whether you notice it or not.
Don’t believe me, well what do the words “superhero”, “realtor”, “face”, “that’s hot” and “bam” all have in common?
They are common words used every day that are actually the legal property of different corporations, and that’s not even the craziest thing that companies are silently putting in their vaults of intellectual property.
We are always told about the wonders of fair competition, but the truth is, if you run a business, competition sucks. To compete in business, you have to provide a better product, market more effectively or lower your prices. Getting those first two right is really hard and lowering prices means less money in your pocket.
It would be so much easier if you could just run your competition out of business and this is genuinely a great business strategy. There is only one problem, it’s illegal, and if you aren’t smart about how you do it, you are going to find yourself in competition with the Federal Trade Commission… in federal court…
But there is a way that you can avoid competition and actually have the authorities on your side to defend it, and that’s by having a trademark, copyright or patent to protect your business.
These are not all the same and companies have realised one is much better than the others…
A patent protects new inventions or scientific discoveries for a period of 20 years. If you invent a new battery that gives electric cars 2,000 miles of range, you should file a patent so car companies can’t use it… without paying you of course.
A patent has to be legally filed with the Patent and Trademark Office.
If a patent is very complicated it can take a long time to get approval but in the meantime your invention will be patent pending, which has no legal protection by itself but will warn other businesses that they will be wasting their money creating the same product because they won’t be allowed to sell it if your patent is eventually approved.
A copyright automatically applies to any creative work. If you write a song, make an original video or paint an artwork copyright will automatically apply to that work and will stay in place for 70 years after your death.
No filing is required for creative works, but it can be harder to legally prove copyright in court if someone does copy what you are doing. Trademarks are… to use the legal terminology… totally OP
The only problem with Trademarks is that they ONLY apply to elements that are clearly related to the branding of a business. For example, a logo like this [Apple logo], or this [HMW logo], can be trademarked because they clearly relate to the branding and identity of a business. Trademarks can also be applied to iconography like micky mouses ears could be trademarked but a movie like Micky Mouse Steamboat Willie can NOT be trademarked because it’s a creative work, NOT branding. Steamboat Willie Actually enter the public domain in just two weeks.
If you are a crafty businessman, you can really corrupt the intention of what trademarks are meant to do by claiming that a catchphrase, sound, image or even a word is part of your branding.
Facebook successfully trademarked the word face, and if you ever wanted to create your own supernaturally powerful heroes you can’t call them superheroes because that’s a trademark which is jointly owned by DC and Marvel, the only companies that will ever be able to make superheroes without the permission of DC or Marvel. In the age of the influencer where the line between brand and human are getting blurred cunning celebrities are jumping in too.
And driving up the value of their business without really doing anything is just the first reason, so it’s time to learn How Money Works, to find out why businesses are desperately trying to trademark everything all of a sudden.
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In israle we have the most entpures /companys outside slicone vally.
And have soical health care
I almost forgot 🇮🇱🇮🇱 is also the 6 most happy country
Trademark boom in the US is linked to Amazon sellers requirement. Amazon 's attempt to vet sellers, forced scammers to trademark the names of bullshit burner companies.
Is the word "Brilliant" trademarked by "Brilliant"
The like this video thing at 8:52 was pretty cool.
this video gives a very reasonable explanation on why you should pirate corporations and not give them any money
I dont need a reason to steal from big companies
If you can get something for free with 0 risk then why pay? Payment would feel like charity and I'd rather be charitable to those in need not some suits
Or just end IP which is anti-capitalistic
@@KrisoVT morally it's wrong but most big companies are morally dubious at best.
@@razzledazzle9971morally it is in fact, not wrong!!
Trademark abuse is extremely common and extremely annoying. Trademarks were supposed to protect widely known brands like Coca-Cola. Trademarking straight-up dictionary words and person names is simply not acceptable and needs to be banned everywhere.
IP needs a complete overhaul, it is absurd.
@@the11382 It can't be overhauled. We're at the point where intellectual property can be infringed by just getting online or even touching grass.
What we need is for intellectual property to be abolished.
I remember a games being sued for including words like "Monster" or "Sky" in them. It's utterly ridiculous
@@Code7Unltd Are you against private property in general? I have a hunch.
@@Code7UnltdIf intellectual property is abolished, how do you encourage research and discovery? And, if you remove all trademark protection, how do you avoid me from copying your brand and either benefiting from your reputation or destroying it by selling horseshit?
The worst thing I stumbled upon is software patents.
Imagine you once got an amazing idea and built built it completely from scratch. It relies heavily in a specific idea or pattern of thinking or decision making.
You build it, release it to the public, start getting some revenue- No. Some obscure company you never heard of sues you for everything you've got because your application just slightly resembles something they *may* have patented in the past. You have an original idea and implement it all by yourself, but as it turns out, that has somehow become illegal. This is absurd.
Yup. 💪😎✌️ Without coin, connections, crews, clout, computer code, control, communities, and opportunities... you're absolutely nothing. That's just the way it is.
@@Novastar.SaberCombatwhat do you mean?
@@ihopeicanchangethis8912 If you haven't watched Silicon Valley, there is an episode that does it with music jingles. It's extortion.
@@ihopeicanchangethis8912exactly what he said.. but even with that it may not be enough. Someone is making a living off exploiting this law
@@ihopeicanchangethis8912It means business is largely practiced as a matter of financial war and not honest competition. Whoever has more or bigger 'guns' wins.
It's ironic that they're doing this, at the same time they're stealing data they don't have rights to to make ai.
It was always like that. Many companies got big by doing unlawful things (by today standards, not at their time), AI will be the same. When Law is defined and applies to it, all the new AI projects, will have to go trough a minefield, that the original didn't have to.
Corporate logic: What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine. Now click agree to sign all your rights away and be happy we give you anything at all for your money, peasants.
That has literally been the base financial model of *every* relevant social media platform in the last two decades.
@@Mightydoggo More like every new endeavour in the history of mankind.
"Legal/moral imperatives for thee, but not for me"
-big money people
This feels like an inevitable result of shaping an entire economy to be run by people with business degrees. This country is gonna devour itself into nothing at this rate.
Rich gotta rich. Poor gotta suffer, serve, and obey. That's just reality. If you ain't rich, you ain't NOTHIN'.
Tbh, just nationalize rouge companies or dissolve them with hard power at this point...
@@elcidleon6500Why just rouge companies? Is there a problem only with companies that make red makeup?
yo facts... the government should be run be a coalition of anthropologists, historians, philosophers, psychologists, evolutionary scientists, priests, generals, economists
when the entire government consists of business men. The goals of the society become to better GDP rather than human lives.
@nickmando2329 Oh, absolutely! Because who needs those pesky 'businessmen' with their concerns about trivial things like economic stability and growth, right? Let's hand the reins of power over to a random gaggle of experts from different fields and watch as they magically solve all our problems.
Because, clearly, a philosopher and a priest will have all the answers to intricate economic policies and international relations. Can't wait to see the GDP skyrocket when we're all sitting around, twiddling our thumbs, pondering the meaning of life!
No Mans Sky was sued because some company had trade marked the word "sky".
Tf? The word sky was used for thousands of years, how is it even legal to trademark a word?
And rebellion digitial sued Lucasarts when they were releasing Star Wars: Rebellion in Europe, and didn't want to deal with it, so they changed the name to Supremacy.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion also got sued and told Rebellion to fuck itself, and the courts agreed, eventually.
@@daniellewilson8527 Sky news, a British channel
Microsoft onedrive used to be called skydrive but had to change their name cuz they got sued for the word sky too
When businesses become so rent seeking, it's time to rein it in. IP law needs a serious overhaul.
Disgusting
Yep, but so long as we keep voting in business and law people into office, not only will nothing change, it'll get worse
@@custos3249Bernie Sanders, then?
@@ElectrostatiCrow I'd even take Grounds Keeper Willie
@@custos3249 Lobbies and near infinite resources make that very difficult. No amount of legal avenues will make things better any time soon.
Not so fun story: a couple of years ago I had a webcomic and was making some merchandise; so I tried to make a t-shirt with an image from the comic and the word "priceless" under it. Turns out you can't use priceless on a produt for sale because it's copyrighted.
This thing is getting mental.
it's a common word in the language. HOW did it get trademarked.
The words We and Face have been trademarked. There will be a day when everything is trademarked
@@southfence7402 I have a clip for just this occasion. th-cam.com/video/eDpUOf4TCZ0/w-d-xo.html
Monster Energy is also really bad about this. They trademarked the term "energy drink", and once a smaller competitor gets big, Monster sues them out of business.
The fact the US feral government allows this is even more crazy.
The wealthy take care of one another, baby. 💪😎✌️ It ain't nothin'.
Not only allow it, they endorse it.
Seems about right for a "feral government"
Wasn't there a debacle regarding The Monster Hunter video game series owned by Nintendo and Monster Energy saying that Nintendo is infringing on the trademark just for the name of the series and games having Monster in the tittle?
@@JohnnyYeTaecanUktenayeah , that was pretty dumb. You don’t own the word monster😂
I really don’t understand how Kylie thought she could trademark a name that millions of girls have
Sounds like she would have if there wasn’t another famous kylie lol..
Because she is famous and has lots of money
Unlike patents with prior art and copyright that allows independent invention in theory (although in practices something that appears to be copy in popular culture is considered a copy like "character copyright") trademarks can be on anything. But the scope of a trademark is limited to its use in marketing.
Copyright for example outlawing people playing music in their dorm room is purely a gross lack of updating the law.
Trademarks are actually the most functional of the three although I suppose that's soon to change.
Kim tried to teademark "kimono" a Japanese traditional attire. Its clear that they dont care about the people affected.
And the stupidest thing is that this has happened with other names to. Conan O'Brien has to pay royalties to the people who own the rights to Conan the Barbarian, even though Conan is literally his freaking name.
I wish there was a way to cut back on this mess. The more it grows, the more creativity is choked out.
Ignore the state and it's feudal Era derived asinine concept of intellectual property.
Piracy, mate
It also greatly hinders economic activity. There's a chart floating around the Internet of the decade books were published, and how many book sales there are of those books at Amazon. The books published in the current decade get the most sales by far, but the next most popular decade is books from the most recent decade where the copyright has expired. So this is a HUGE issue when copyright is life plus 70 years.
@@vpaul4374 Problem is, what if you want to create a game or movie of your own? Pirating only benefits the consumer, whereas these laws are also stifling people who want to create. When it's at the point where giant conglomerates regularly sue creators for fan content they've released FOR FREE (or even original content for some dumb BS reason like "your character vaguely resembles our character"), we have a problem.
@FuckGoogle502 There will always be people willing to support indie creators/developers. Piracy is just a way to regulate the greedy big companies and also serves as a reminder to the small and medium ones to stay humble.
Some are people freaking out over Ida Auken's "you will own nothing and you'll be happy", idea presented by Klaus Schwab during the 2016 World Economic Forum. They assume the boogeyman that will bring this to fruition will be their government, all the while ignoring the fact that companies are manifesting this more and more every day.
...Like this new software or widget and want to buy it? You can't, but we'll rent it to you for $9.99/mo. Want to use the heated seats and remote start in the $50,000 vehicle you just bought? Sure, give us your credit card and we'll sign you up for a $6.99/mo subscription. Cracked your phone screen and want to repair it? You can't because the hardware is ID locked and won't recognize the new part from an original phone used as a donor.
fun little bit of misdirection companies are using there...
Government and corporations are on the same team, that is clear to everyone.
@@the11382 I'd argue that the government is bought and paid for by corps. They're little more than expensive marionette puppets.
Insofar as there are government regulations, subsidies, or enforced monopolies or cartels, businesses are not private but quasi-government agencies. Our current economic model is pretty comparable to economic fascism in practice.
We already own nothing,I'm waiting for the "be happy" part
@@robob4465well that's the neat part: you won't be!!
The strategy of monopolies never ended in the gilded age, they just evolved
When Bill Gates kicked out competitors in the computer OS market we should have panicked.
oh it ended... it was just born again after 30 years with a vengeance
It did die, strangled by regulations. Then one at a time, starting in the '70s but with massive damage done in the '80s starting with Raegan and continuing through the '90s and early 2000s, all safeguards were lifted. And now here we go again.
At the same time, the silver lining is that safeguards were once imposed.
Now, if only common people stop biting to the rich's propaganda that government is there to oppres you, when in fact it's the only shield the common folk has against the castled economic power, we can maybe do it again.
They strategized, funded think tanks like the Hoover institution and the FEE and eventually brainwashed the public into giving their hard fought gains away.
the free in free markets stands for supply and demand being free to adjust to each other - in other words - no one gets to control the supply to maximize profits, because competition can always join in (being attracted by the profit that suppl < demand causes) to INCREASE the supply until it meets demand (at cost) at which point the profit VANISHES.
Any regulatory rule that prevents competition (mostly IP based) creates UNFREE markets, markets where supply an demand are not free to adjust to each other.
It's a political problem, caused by a minority (0.00x% get elected into office) who create rules that benefit a few at the cost of the rest.
TL;DR: representative democracy is NOT sustainable.
We will inevitably live in a dystopian world where we will literally pay a corporation to take each and every breath.
Remember when the guy from Nestle tried to own all the water? People at that level really are insane.
American legal culture be like "free speech"
Then trademarked shit down to the vowel
Yes, I too, an American, have trademarked down to the vowel. We all do it. My neighbor trademarked the consonants from the word "neighbor", so he didn't do it down to the vowel though. NGHBR. You've probably heard of it. It's amazing how many Americans cry "free speech" and then trademark words like Free, Speech, and Shit. They even trademark the words of Canadians who troll on American news media.
@@Mike-fx4nu edited
That's the truth, sadly. When a society is free, powerful people would abuse that freedom to ensure that they're the ones remaining free. Everyone wants infinite wealth. The problem is infinite wealth cannot exist in a world of finite resources. And with diminishing resources, fewer and fewer people are gonna stay free
@@Mike-fx4nu triggered american thinks he's smart but doesn't know what hyperbole is.
@@CvnDqnrU triggered third world houseless peon thinks he's smart but doesn't know what deflection is.
You should look into plant utility patents. They allow big plant breeders to patent even heritage plant varieties, unless someone finds and complains first. A vegetable breeder patented red-to-the-core lettuce under utility patent which stopped anyone being able to grow the couple of old red to the core heritage lettuce varieties, or developing more. It was only luck that someone found and oppose a utility patent on warty skin on squash which would have stopped anyone from growing a heap of traditional squash varieties. It is a real worry for small, independent vegetable breeders like me who specialises in breeding for home growing and small market garden varieties.
Why is someone allowed to patent nature or longstanding plant varieties? Something is deeply wrong.
It's even worse in poorer countries where farmers cannot afford to grow food because they cannot legally proliferate seeds that are trademarked by Monsanto
Living things and their components should be ineligible for patent protection!
nah poor countries don't follow the law in general@@TheShadowcreator
The scary part is that HP and Bell Labs have been doing this for years.
Your job reviews at these companies are dependent on how many patents you fill.
Both HP and Bell Labs have patents walls like trophies on display.
I bet someone has a patent concept for an Iron Man Arc Reactor and a Warp core in case someone actually builds a working one.
They'll sue the inventor for patent infringement.
Which brings up patent trolls that buys seemingly useless pantents and waits for a target to exploit millions of dollars from.
The system needs to either be either seriously overhauled or done away with.
But it benefits the ultra-wealthy. So you know that ain't gonna happen, lol! 💪😎✌️ If you ain't rich, you ain't sheet.
Registering a trademark isn't free, at least in Europe. You need to pay a yearly fee which isn't necessarily cheap - for small businesses it's just another cost.
For large businesses it's a drop in the bucket
For trademarks you only need to pay a fee every 10 years. Patents require a yearly fee starting with the 3rd year.
@@PsyrenXYOf course...
@@harumi28Interesting, I'll look into it.
@@harumi28 What's crazy about patents, is you don't even need a working prototype, you can just have an idea and create a bunch of documents saying what it should do. Then if anyone DOES create it over the next 20 years you can sue them.
thats why indian goverment has said it will never consider patents or trademark filled outside country
time to move to India. This is getting out of hand. Ancient rome style.
I've heard of artists trademarking chords and scales too. I don't know where that ended up but this is crazy stuff.
As a pianist, I have to say. What in the actual FUCK????
Didn't know Kylie Minogue saved us from a particularly stupid abuse of IP law. Just another reason to be a fan.
No word in the dictionary should be eligible for a trademark
This could actually be rather easy to implement. We should just have the law specify that singular words, that aren't neogloisms (words that have been newly created, a relevant example being "Pokémon"), are no longer eligible to be trademarked. If it is in most dictionaries, then it is off limits. Then, no one could trademark "Monster", but small groups of words like "Monster Energy Drink" could be trademarked.
It should work like this:
Corporation - "We have a patent"
Me - "I invented it and built it and I have all the evidence to prove that fact"
Corporation - "but we have THE patent"
Government - "corporation, get fucked"
That is how it works. If you can predate the patent with your own invention and prove it, you can invalidate the patent.
@@JCintheBCC but that's just it, the patent predates the invention
@@Woodsnat I'm sorry. You're talking about a situation that someone described it, wrote it up, and got through years of examination of their patent application to get allowance without inventing the thing they patented?
We need stronger laws against patent trolling and other forms of vexatious litigation.
The problem is it's also super hard to get rid of patent trolls and over patenting by companies. you going to have to be really clever with the way you regulate
the body that created those patent, copyright, etc. rules is supposed to create more rules that undo what it did in the first place? How so?
It won't happen until it gets so bad the wealthy are stepping on each others' toes too much and it's too costly.
@@joansparky4439regulatory capture... ain't it a bitch?
This inherently comes with intellectual property, which is, by definition, a state-enforced monopoly.
Why is it even legal to trademark single words of the english lenguage?!
This species is going to destroy itself and everything else in the name of greed. Copyright and trademarks are something that sounds remotely alright in theory, but is really just another obstruction to creation and an expression of the age-old human mentality of "IT'S MINE AND YOU CANT HAVE IT!" "Competition" Should be a good thing, but there is an absurd amount of competition in literally every field for an individual, yet nearly none for corporations that have already gotten to the top.
Lol no we're not 😂
Imagine if a bear could handle a gun. You want to see greed? Watch a lion.
That's a trademark phrase, you can't say that@@UnprofessionalProfessor
@@reviewchan9806 I own it, so I can say it.
@@UnprofessionalProfessorWell I’m suing you for it
The same thing has been going on with web domains for many years. Pretty much all website names are taken, but they’re not even being used. companies just buy them up and let sit for forever. It’s annoying.
yep, I went broke and lost my url. some squatter has been sitting on it for 10 years
I think we should have a executive order to outlaw trademarking words
Executive orders are not law.
@@trevinbeattie4888 no but is a start atleast
Imagine if all that human intelectual power were dedicated to solve actual problems instead of creating more of them.
Its situations like these that make me admire china's complete lack of trademark enforcement. Especially because the typical victims are big corporations that are fully responsible for the state of domestic trademark laws
In China, u can try to copyright something, but every competitor in the market is extremely quick at mimicking and improving upon whatever u are trying to file that by the time u got it down, they have already made a ton of money and u wasted money achieving not much.
Thus, the best strategy is to focus on innovating as fast as possible to maximize profit
The lack of protections also harms China too. For its size and amount of economic activity, modern China is sorely lacking in prolific brands and valuable soft power because their own compatriots keep undercutting them.
Sales and marketing command more value-added than raw manufacturing, so the lack of support for this keeps China stuck in the middle income trap.
Good luck with Chinese censorship laws tough
Patent trolls are the worst. If they were only going after tech giants, I probably wouldn't care so much. But they often target start-ups and smaller, independent businesses that simply do not have the resources to fight back.
What we need is a consortium that has the power to investigate and cancel patents that are being enforced in a frivolous manner by trolls.
What can we even do to stop these companies? This should be illegal. The point of competition is to make better products for the consumer. At the end of all this, every word will be copyrighted and trademarked. I’m personally pissed about all this.
No, the point of competition is to make your profits higher. It literally has nothing to do with quality of products - those are steadily going down, with prices going up. What makes better products is the opposite - cooperation. Competition in business creates a toxic environment, that leads to a whole bunch of negative consequences downstream.
@@vebdakluI mean, I partially agree. Though in our capitalist system, what we’re dealing with right now is due to a lack of competition because major companies have consolidated and lobbied the government to secure their privileged positions. This is inevitable in every capitalist system.
The 2nd amendment gives you everything you need. Except the one thing that matters - willpower.
@@patnor7354
Attempt to put this notion into practice. See how far you get.
This is extreeeemely close to actual thought police. It's definitely a legal form of censorship! Also, imagine the time wasted by educated people who are forced to participate in the process of "hey, if you use the word face in your branding, you must pay this guy who said he owns it".
A related item is a certain restriction on uploaded videos: A creator films a street scene, and uploads it to, let's say, TH-cam. However, YT is obligated to take that video down, because in the video, a car with a loud stereo just happened to dive by. The reasoning for this involves "copyrighted material". That policy is just too far over the line, and needs to be addressed.
It's legal to crush your competition, only if you are not caught doing it.
Or unless you can afford the fine
Pretty true
Some companies abuse the law to eliminate their competitors.
SOME?!?
*most
That's the main reason why laws exist. It's a tool for abuse. Unironically.
Otherwise the society would run on contracts.
Honestly, Trademarks need to be overhauled.
It can't be that companies can just claim common words or names.
Because, big companies seem to also love to sue small people for using a common word.
Like "Monster" suing people that use the word "Monster". Even if they have nothing to do with energy drinks.
Or Sky suing everyone using Sky.
The thing is, wether or not the lawsuit would be successful doesn't even matter, because no person can sustain a lawsuit against big companies.
Like, if I'd create a game called "Heroes and Monsters" and subsequently get sued by Monster, how tf am I supposed to fight it? I'm just some random guy with barely any money to my name. There's no way I could afford to fight this.
Legally, I'm in the clear. There's no way my name would infringe on their trademark, since it's not even in the same branch.
But, financially, I just can't fight it.....
Rent economy is just stagnation, and businesses that participate in this stuff, should be heavily penalised, split up or turned into non profits.
The irony of AI training on data scraped from the internet without the creators permission only to squash potential trademark violations
I still remember when Candy crush tried to trademark the word Candy rather than its full phrase and was shot down quickly.
I say trademark "trademark" and "tm".. then cash in if anyone else has a trademark.
Id love to agree this can't be done, but considering the number of common words they are allowing trademark on, I wouldnt be too surprised if it went thru.
Anyone™ can™ trademark™ any™ word™ as™ long™ as™ a™ mark™ is™ there™.
I once read that the phrase "freedom of speech" is trademarked. No idea if that's true, but it's Orwellian if true.
I have come to hate the term "intellectual property". Just like social justice isn't justice, intellectual property isn't property. I understand it was a thing from the founding of the nation, but the protections for such have been extended so long it's absurd.
Intellectual property is one of the few justifiable monopolies. Because a person or company put work into creating an idea, they should deserve some exclusivity to the value of that idea for some time. Importantly, it must the personal claim must degrade as the idea becomes part of the commons. If you want exclusive use of some intellectual property after it becomes common, you should have to compensate society for that deprivation. For more on this type of thinking, consider LVT and Georgism.
@RavenMyBoat so why should someone be granted exclusive rights to something just because they thought of it first? In the examples of the video, what gives companies the right to claim common words like "face" as their own intellectual property, when the word has existed much longer than the company itself? In the medical field we see a lot of this intellectual property, somehow they are able to keep the prices insulin up despite it having been around since the 1920's?
wtf are you going on about lol
I don’t hate intellectual property, just like the public domain it’s a law and a law can be good or bad depending on its structure and how people abide by it. Since IP allows you to profit off something you made (yes even if it uses things already created) for sometime before your forced to compete or make something new. But trademarking everything will just stifle quality since there’s no competition.
TLDR copyright and public domain can be good laws it’s just copyright ended up changed for the worst.
The term thats missing here is "rent seeking"
IP law is bs. How can I steal something if you still possess it?
Just had a thought regarding the emergence of AI as a means of monitoring and surveillance in the digital world. If AI is trained and then effectively capable of removing the posting of replica posts, would that not destroy the marketplace of cheaper replicas? For example, clothing. A company could significantly increase the prices of their products by 5-10x, knowing that a trademark makes it impossible for competition or cheaper manufacturers to reproduce. I suggest stockpiling luxurious goods that can be purchased cheaper before the access is heavily restricted and you are forced to buy from the authorised retailers.
when greed becomes law, piracy becomes duty.
- luffy idk
I feel like we're ready for a "clean house" politician to go through our laws, precedents, trademarks, etc and consolidate, discard, and overall clean this mess up. The laws are so complicated and the patent/trademark/copyright space is so illegitimate, we should just have a team of lawyers go through and start revising and fixing. Keep what's legitimate, discard what's not, codify what's precedent but not written down plainly, and fix our legal system. I suspect companies would actually be on board with this. The arms race has gotten out of control and it's very expensive for them to pantomime productivity just to carve out my trademark territory, or defend themselves against patent trolls. And the public would benefit wildly from a Justinian-style redo.
A dictator?
@@Mike-fx4nuNo. Dictatorships aren't the only way to get work done, just the worst way.
I'm not sure what country you're from, but in the US this is standard presidential campaign stuff. A politician, left or right, who runs on the platform of "clean up our laws" and pushes to get congress on board? They'd get a lot of support from the public. Congress would push back because so many are in the pockets of big interests, and that's often where these big ventures die. However, I could see them bowing to voters when the president is rallying the public to push their elected officials to move forward. Law reform doesn't have to become a left/right thing -- there's a lot of reform that would have bipartisan support. Sadly, a lot of laws are deliberately written in legal weasel words, or not written down as explicit laws, to keep them from being accessible. I'm hoping people can get behind a mission to fix that and push it through despite corrupt interests.
It's far from guaranteed to work. US politics is its own worst enemy in many respects, but it's something I could see a politician making their big goal, whether it's a president or congressman, or even just starting at the state level as a first step.
Agreed. The worst part about it is that in the US at least our current copyright system is almost certainly unconstitutional, since patents/etc. are supposed to be for only a limited amount of time. But when copyright lasts for Life plus 70 years, meaning that a newborn's grandchildren will probably never live to see something created in the year the newborn was born have it's copyright expire, that means that the copyright is effectively forever, which is obviously excessively long. Copyright in the founding fathers era was just 14 years at most.
that would not end up well for all the (99% of the human species) who arent royalist loyalists. you know damn well there is no such thing as an honorable and empathic lawyer. we'd need it to be a fully democratized endeavor. otherwise it would end up far worse than now, where only european monarchs can do anything in the market, kind of like the uk.
Sounds like you want someone to… drain the swamp?
As a long time IT professional and lawyer, I'd hoped I'd be dead before it came to this. One of the ways to keep ™️©️®️ in check is the time and effort to detect and prosecute it - keeping it to higher profile (and perhaps the most egregious) cases of infringement. AI could break that completely.
Should protest for law stating that business/companies/corporations valued at 7 digits of dollars or more can't file/claim/hold a patent for any longer than 5 years.
Even 8 digits would do it
No one should be able to hold a patent or copyright for longer than 10 years period. Copyright used to be no more than 14 years when the US was founded, and that required applying for an extension (and paying a fee) after 7 years, which most people didn't even do. Now it's life plus 70 years or 125 years for corporations, which is absolutely absurd, and is effectively forever since you'll be long dead by the time anything that came out when you were born is no longer copyrighted.
@@shadowninja6689>10 years
Too generous. I'd stick at 5.
They’d resubmit the trademark in 5 years then.
Really good topic and video. Shows how we need to change Trademark laws now and patent laws. There is no excuse in patent trolls.
I dream of a day when money is no longer a controlling force in politics. Then laws can be passed to put patent trolls out of business in the name of improved competition.
Not entirely. I had a discussion with legal experts for a startup I am trying to do. Patents has a protection on functionality and components of a product. You don't really patent the entirety of a product.
I'm sure you are aware of this, but patents and trademarks (both of which you talk about) are very different. The video is a little confusing in that in the first part, the voiceover is often talking about trademarks while the video is showing patent-related stuff. Patents are (generally speaking) things that have been invented, such as devices, algorithms, even recipes, and also have terms which are 20 years from the date of filing, so if the patent takes 2-3 years to be granted, the product has fewer years of patent protection while actually on the market (though, if the USPTO, which is understaffed and takes forever to review and grant patents, takes what it deems to be an excessively long time, it can extend the length of the patent in the interest of fairness). Patents for drugs are technically 20 years, but that's from the time the drug was invented; after clinical trials, FDA approvals, etc., which can take up 8 years, according to the Internet (tm), the drug has only 10 or so years on the market before the patent expires and competitors can start making generics. This might be why pharma companies advertise so hard when the drug first comes out - they only have so long where they can charge premium prices and hopefully recoup their development costs. (And PS, I'm not trying to be overly picky with this comment, I just find the subject kind of fascinating so I'm blathering on about it.) 🙂And of course, all of this just applies to US patents, there is a whole world out there with varying patent laws.
There is a process called “evergreening” in the Pharma industry where patents like the one on making insulin have been maintained in perpetuity by virtue of the company making a slight improvement to the product, getting FDA approval for the improvement, and then the FDA dis-approves the previous (marginally worse) form of the product (the version that goes into the public domain).
4:30 I think this is what baffles me and a lot of other people the most. Just the fact that not only it is okay to turn the language itself people use to communicate into a private asset, but that the criteria is basically dependent on how many powerful/wealthy people are willing to stop you. How does that make ANY sense????
It makes sense under capitalism, hell yeah bruddah
The problem with this is that intellectual property as a concept is fundamentally flawed. I could take more time to explain, but I really do just think it’s prima fasciae bullshit.
Unlike patents, trademarks never expire. So that's a huge issue if you allow trademarking common words or terms. Trademark should only be allowed to world you came up with and can prove that you own the word and there was no prior art/use before that trademark...
Oh, sounds like patents...
I foresee that this will lead to transforming language. I think TMing will require people to make up words that will then be adopted in the future. Similar to how people adopted text acronyms due to flip phone texting.
baby: goo goo ga ga
disembodied ai voice: thank you for using babies' 1st words(TM) your account has been charged
It's getting to the point where you should just go ahead and start that overtly copyright-infringing business, and consider any legal fallout as just cost-of-doing-business and deal with it creatively.
So the basic synopsis I’m getting is that trademark laws should be scrapped and replaced with simpler trademark laws. For example, Kelloggs makes Poptarts so poptarts is trademarked because that was a completely invented word by Kellogg.
However, Apple trying to trademark the word Apple is ridiculous because they named the company after a fruit.
Hmm. Some companies sell access to AI models, while most give them away for free. Whatever laws are passed will be overstepped by releasing models from friendly jurisdictions. Proving output came from specific models is impossible, afaik.
It makes sense to have a trademark system for company names and logos. Everything else? Not so hot!
This is the whole point of EA's (and others like Microsoft and Activision) classic buyouts. The smaller companies usually make a couple of corporate-mandated cash grabs before crashing, but by then the larger company already has the patents and trademarks, so the acquisition was a success.
I'm perfectly happy with "realtor" being trademarked, since it's a mainly just a word that real estate salespeople use to trick consumers into thinking that they're skilled professionals of some sort, so nobody else should be using the word, anyway.
Realtor is synonymous with charlatan.
I don’t think you quite understand the relevant IP law. This conflates “patents and trademarks”, where we talk about the competitive advantage of trademarks in the abstract, but almost every specific example is of patents, which are much more rife with abuse. Trademarks aren’t invulnerable, they can be challenged. An unenforced trademark atrophies. A company that doesn’t actively enforce their trademark loses it. The tests that a court will apply in a trademark case limit the scope and the potential damage in most cases. In the land of IP law, trademark is uniquely pro-consumer. Its primary purpose, and use, is to prevent deception of consumers. A trademark isn’t a very strong unfair competitive advantage in most cases, it just allows a company to sue a company that tries to fool customers into buying their brand - a deception. IP law sucks and is rife with abuse, but that’s almost entirely in copyright and patent law, not trademark law.
Blending trademarks, like generative AI would do, is not a violation of trademark law. If you do not understand why, you do not understand what a trademark is, or how it is different than copyright on a fundamental level. That’s why you can buy “Professor Spice” at the grocery store - ripping off another trademark is totally cool, as long as a reasonable consumer can tell the difference, because that’s the point. “Derivative work” only matters for copyright and patent, not for trademark.
Try suing a big tech company over anything then. You will run out of money many times faster.
@@the11382 This is true. I don’t see how that connects to anything I said though. What’s your point?
@@soshe9582 Large businesses throw nukes, small businesses just get squashed. And corporatism continues until the system becomes actually fair for the little guy.
@@the11382No legal system has or ever will be fair for the little guy because institutional capture will always put the larger actors at an advantage in conflict.
As someone who has studied, worked, and battled in this space (IP law), it’s always interesting to hear a new take. Bravo!
But corporations love freedom! How is it possible!? I am in shambles!
Well, it is freedom...for them to blackmail others with impunity.
This video proves that some specific countries come up with great ideas, then twist them and others copy that shitified idea and everyone suffers.
Always interesting, thank you.
The problem with trademarks is that the misuse of the trademark must create confusion in the marketplace to be misuse. Since it is a civil action, there has to be harm to the person that owns the trademark. If Apple uses your trademark and you benefit from the confusion through more sales, you actually can't stop Apple from using your trademark.
In a world where everything is trademarked the people need to sign a terms and conditions paper and email it to even take a sh*t in the morning....
Abolish trademarks, this is getting out of hand
Patents can be overcome on prior art. I'd like to make any term in the dictionary uncopyrightable
Trademarks, copyrights, and patents all need to be nerfed in a logarithmic way. Where the total number of claims or total value of the companies with their subsidiaries and parents affect the annual fee the entity must pay annually. The numbers are arbitrary but for example a single trademark costs only 20 USD to roll over every year but two trademarks cost 100 USD to roll over every year. Additionally, the total value of an entity could also come into play where the same 2 trademarks would cost Apple 100 million USD to maintain claim over the two trademarks. The objective is to force the company to decide what's actually essential to their branding.
There could also be a clear delineation between patent and trademark, where trademark is Logo with a 255 char limit describing its uses while a patent allows several pages to describe the process or object.
This video shows how the world would be a better place if we just abolished all patents and copyrights and forced people to actually compete against each other instead of getting lawyers involved. People getting fed up with these government granted monopolies with patents & copyright are why the pirate party has been a thing in many countries with parliamentary systems.
I'm pretty sure the fundamental principle of a patent - the one that lasts 20 years, is to incentivize inventors to come up with new stuff, AND to protect the small businesses from being eaten up by big corporations.
So yea you have a new idea, but Apple sees your idea, and manufactures at a billion times your scale and sell it. No small businesses can ever start.
That amazing moment when a new video from one of your favorite channels drops while you're going through their back catalog
The McD gang busting up Burger King was amazing 😂
Sounds like a lot of rich people made their money and when i try to make mine i get told now thats not legal but it was when they did it.
The American Dream - preventing others from succeeding
This is a crisis . Wtf . At this rate we need to find a synonym for face . This needs help
These videos get better and better
We changed the name of our company from what we were going to originally use because of the ILLEGAL TM of SuperHero (yes it is illegal because 2 competing companies share the registration - they also do not fight infringement all the way through to the end, everyone who waited till a trial seems to win by default, however their scare tactics to that point are really strong)
I too, love using GPD every day to drive to my locations.
8:50 woah 😮 since when can creators animate buttons on here ? That was a cool little sparkle.
Intellectual property is illegitimate and should be abolished
Even if you post a video to TH-cam with a completely silly soundtrack that you made up with some free looping software, somebody will claim it's their music.
The biggest problem is that if you arent a rich company, you literally cannot make anything because everything is patented in some ridiculous not actually valuable by itself way.
3:48 love the money sliding there 🤣
Fun Fact:
There is company that filled for a patent of "exchange/transfer/distributions of digital information via network connection" and fought every single major tech company on it...Dude patent troll the concept of the internet and got paid for it...
The depressing inevitability. Just sue everyone.
8:52 scared the crap out of me, I didn't even know TH-cam had that feature
Awesome Video as always, How did Adam get away with trademarking the word "WE" ??
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Tread mark is not a patent and vice versa. Sometimes in the video its mixed up the two its hard for people to understand they are separate things for someone who doesn't know they are different things. Thank you for the informative video.
Nice work on retroactively changing the thumbnail.
the like animation at 8:50 is crazy
I desperately need the FTC and government to wake up and review trademark, copyright, patent, and IP laws in general. Intellectual property becomes increasingly important as technology and markets improve. But the laws surrounding them are still so one sided after corporate lobbying and far too abusive. It's unsustainable and really dangerous for consumers and competition. There needs to be intellectual property rights, but we also need to reach a much better middle ground.
It is only a matter of time before an organisation goes nuclear and declares trademarking language as squatting and asks the supreme court to clarify, do squatter rights apply wrt trademarks and thus such rights are extended to all property, physical or intellectual or vice versa
Reminds me of Conglomo from RML: "We own you."