I'm sorry, but are you fucking kidding me?
"Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany
21–30 of 48 posts
Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I had literally the exact same issue. They said I had to get them paperwork from Apple's legal department, ignoring Apple trademark page saying it's okay to use the Mac trademark to sell a Mac app which I forwarded to them with an explanation.
My exact ad said "Try _____, a better way to _____ for Windows and Mac".
They didn't mention the Windows trademark. Pfft.
Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany
#23I went to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) site and searched for the word "hackathon" in their (US) trademark database and it didn't find anything, so US-based hackathons should be fine (for now).
In Germany, I'm sure the Germans can come up with some long-German-word-like-'marathon-of-hacking'-that-means-the-same-thing-as-hackathon, if they haven't already.
Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany
#24It's a shame this hasn't been posted anywhere before the deadline for Opposition Proceedings had been reached (March 7th 2013). Whether it would have been possible to stop this at all is another matter, of course.
Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany
#25Germans 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 [...] because the word "immersion" is trademarked in Germany.
Immersion is a German word.
(as many others comes from Latin as the English word does)
(Physik) Einbetten eines Objekts in eine Flüssigkeit mit besonderen lichtbrechenden Eigenschaften (zur Untersuchung von Kristallformen und in der Mikroskopie)
(Astronomie) Eintritt eines Himmelskörpers in den Schatten eines anderen
Methode des Fremdsprachenunterrichts, bei der die Schüler von Anfang an in großem Umfang in der Fremdsprache unterrichtet werden
(EDV) Eintauchen in eine virtuelle Umgebung
Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.
Which means it should at most be blocked for categories in which a trademark is held, not for ads in other categories, or use as a generic word - if at all.
Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany
#27Germans 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"?
"Bonjour(tm), tu as touché(tm) du doigt un vrai problème durant ton exposé(tm)."
"Hello, you pointed out a real issue during your talk."
Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany
#28You 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 Tra…
Ya, the "Hon" trademark was ridiculous. I think I saw that on kitchen nightmares. I could see a similar backlash happening over hackathon.
If that happened in the states I'd definitely boycott someone trying to own something that belongs to the community.
Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany
#29You 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 Tra…
>You can trademark anything that isn't already trademarked //
That's absolutely wrong in the UK and USA. In Germany their English language guidance notes say:
"The following are also excluded from registration: promotional statements, general advertising slogans and word sequences that have become customary in the current language as fixed expression."
So it's wrong there too.
>"the due diligence when filing is on the filer for the most part"
In some jurisdictions but by no means all.
I'm surprised there were no oppositions filed, guess TM registrations are off most peoples radars. Of course the TM lacks distinctiveness and so is probably going to be struck down, doesn't stop them wielding it as part of a shakedown though.
Re: "Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany
#30It's a shame this hasn't been posted anywhere before the deadline for Opposition Proceedings had been reached (March 7th 2013). Whether it would have been possible to stop this at all is another matter, of course.
What about this...? A simple tool might be useful as a first line of defense against silly filings. First, the tool could monitor trademark filings. Second, it could compare against common words, perhaps from a dictionary. Third, it could score filings using a 'frivolity' score. Fourth, perhaps it could expose its a moderation queue via a mailing list or web interface. Fifth, maybe it could be gamified?