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"Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany

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Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany

#3

Post by C1D »

This has been trademarked in Germany so it shouldn't be a problem for people in other places, I presume (correct me if I'm wrong); but, this will be a problem for Germans. A quick google search shows that there are Hackathons happening in Germany and I'd like to know if the holder will take legal action.

Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany

#4

Post by kintamanimatt »

Why?

The trademark has been filed in Germany by a German events directory. Their main focus appears to be club events, not nerd events and indeed there is only one listing from mid last year for a hackathon.

Are they getting into the trademark troll business on the side?

Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany

#6

Post by jcampbell1 »

Germans apparently allow all sorts of English words to be trademarked. I ran into the problem buying Google ads, and the ads would get rejected for a trademark violation. The whole campaign would get messed up because I targeted english speakers worldwide and the ads got rejected because the word "immersion" is trademarked in Germany.

Edit: I think Google has since improved the error message and gives a message like "Ad is running, but cannot be run in all regions due to a trademark issue." Adwords used to just reject the ad with ominous text "trademark violation".

Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany

#7

Post by brandon_wirtz »

You can trademark anything that isn't already trademarked, but you have to defend the trademark if you want to enforce the trademark.

Trademarks are a lot like patents, the due diligence when filing is on the filer for the most part. The agency only checks against the filings. So you can get a trademark for Hackathon, but if you tried to enforce it you would lose if there are prior uses by others.

You could get a Trademark in an alternate context. Like if you decided to combine a marathon with a machete and have a run through the jungle. That could be a new use for Hackathon that would be unlikely to cause confusion in the market.

That said I'm sure they will send some C&D's and scare some people in to not using the term.

The "Hon" trademark for a Baltimore restaurant springs to mind. Where the owner tried to extract money from the city of Baltimore, but she ended up dropping the trademark after community backlash.

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