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"Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany

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11–20 of 48 posts

Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany

#11

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?

Nachtleben.de seems to have also some kind of IT recruitement branch: http://www.young-targets.com/imprint/

Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany

#12

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…

"Germans apparently allow all sorts of English words to be trademarked."

Like "Apple"?

Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany

#14
post #9

Germans brothers called 'Samwer' copycat any existing successful website like ebay, amazon etc. Now they probably will trademark any single existing word. So typically german, just like chinese...

I can't see any connection to the Samwers or any of their companies in this case.

Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany

#16

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…

"Germans apparently allow all sorts of English words to be trademarked." Like "Apple"?

In the US, you couldn't trademark the word "Apple" in the food category since it is the term for a group of fruits. It is valid in other categories.

Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany

#17

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…

"Germans apparently allow all sorts of English words to be trademarked." Like "Apple"?

You are right, that may not be a fair characterization. The problem I see is how a list of trademarked words becomes blacklisted for use in advertising. I am fine if Germans want to let any word be trademarked, and then sort it out later in the court system. But we have a situation where the trademark list is auto-uploaded to Google and stops the word "hackathon" from being used in ads in Germany, thus a real problem.

Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany

#18

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?

It's the same agency that does http://www.nerd-zone.com/, which seems to be partially funded by public money.

Edit: The agency also has a word mark on "Nerd Zone", both seem to be motivated by this: http://www.nerd-zone.com/hackathon.

Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Germans apparently allow all sorts of English words to be trademarked." Like "Apple"?

You are right, that may not be a fair characterization. The problem I see is how a list of trademarked words becomes blacklisted for use in advertising. I am fine if Germans want to let any word be trademarked, and then sort it out later in the court system. But we have a situation where the trademark list is auto-uploaded to Google and stops the word "hackathon" from being used in ads in Germany, thus a real problem…

The automatic trademark blacklist in Google adwords is really idiotic even if the trademark is valid. I once tried making an ad for my Mac app, and I couldn't include the word "Mac" or "Mac OS" in the copy because they are trademarks.
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