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TWiT is suing Twitter, alleging breach of contract and copyright infringement
- tw1010 9y agoJust curious, if he loses this, in what range would the monetary costs that he'd have to shoulder lie?
- jjeaff 9y agoMost likely nothing more than his own legal costs. The suit would have to be considered frivolous to get anything and the publicly available data already shows that Laporte has plenty to go on.
- superkuh 9y agoSeems like Laporte has a solid case with lots of documentation. He'll need it facing twitter's legal army.
- mc32 9y agoThey'll probably just have to pay licensing fees (as Apple does to Cisco for iOS and "iPhone" or to Apple the record co.) Legals can't just make trademarks go away. Either way, should be interesting to see the resolution to this.
- baddox 9y agoThat’s probably a very acceptable outcome! It’s been years since I followed Twit and similar video content, but it was a big part of my “nerd upbringing.”
- nailer 9y agoI know there's a show called This Week in Tech, but do people actually call it 'twit'?
- HenryBemis 9y agoYes, we do actually call it TWIT
- klausjensen 9y agoThey actually do, yes. Source: Listened to many Leo Laporte podcasts over the years, but stopped a couple of years ago, due to the noise/ads to content ratio.
- arethuza 9y agoI used to listen to TWiT but signed up for Audible based on their recommendation of the service and I stopped listening to podcasts and listen to audiobooks!
- iagooar 9y agoIt's like saying: I stopped reading newspaper, and read novels only now! Even though they share the same channel (text, audio, etc.), those are not replaceable things. Or at least that's my opinion.
- baddox 9y agoI’ve always referred to their entire network as TWiT. If memory serves me correctly, all their shows (not just This Week in Tech) used to begin with a bumper that said “Netcasts you love, from people you trust. This.....is TWiT.”
- SyneRyder 9y agoThey still do. Here it is at the start of this week's MacBreak Weekly episode (at 24 second mark): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFSJ2axjbW4&t=24s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFSJ2axjbW4&t=24s
- satysin 9y agoTWiT is the network as a whole. This Week in Tech is just one show (the original show?) on the TWiT network along with Windows Weekly, Security Now, etc.
- yeukhon 9y agoNot sure. William stepped down from CEO and is only a board member. Unless I am wrong, since there is no formal contract ever signed, then this implicit, informal contract/agreement may be null after William’s resignation. Consider the following scenarios: 1. Suppose there was a board meeting in which William had voted No on the expansion, since thr majority ruled in favor of the expansion, could plantiff now argue the new management was aware of this implicit agreement? Had William ever shared this information with anyone else? 2. If not, and if the board and the CEO were not aware of this implicit agreement until recently - whether William had forgotten about this whole agreement or not, then is Twitter obligated to honor this implicit agreement? It seems Twitter should honor the agreement because William represented Twitter when he made that correspondence. However, it is not uncommon for one CEO to write “We do not have a plan to sign a contract with your competitor yet”, then after his or her resignation, the new CEO can join force with the competitor. That’s perfectly legal and has always been done before. If a resturant owner said “I will never stop ordering wines from you”, then the new owner doesn’t have to honor this causal “promise”. Let’s see how the court takes this case.
- smallnamespace 9y agoYou may be right on these specifics (and I'm sure Twitter's lawyers will spend hundreds of hours searching through all the possible permutations), but on the other hand, as long as someone is acting in the capacity of a corporate officer with duly appointed authority, and makes an agreement in that capacity, then the agreement binds the corporate entities. Whether that officer then informed other members of the company may not really be material here. Just ask yourself whether this would be a good general policy: corporations get to escape contracts if their exec promises something and then leaves, or they just 'conveniently' forgets to inform other execs. In that world, how can any two corporations agree on anything? Note that if an exec really does enter in a huge future liability and fails to inform the corporation, the usual way it should be resolved is the corporation is still liable, and then the corporation sues the former exec for failure to execute duties properly, with the sudden unanticipated liabilities going towards proving damages.
- jjeaff 9y ago
- covercash 9y agoWell clearly Twitter should just acquire TWiT and turn the platform into their own talking head political commentary network.
- dec0dedab0de 9y agodoes anyone remember the name of the alternate microblogging platform leo laporte was using when this first came up ~ 10 years ago? I remember one episode he just gave in and used twitter.
- mikeflynn 9y agoJaiku or Pownce?
- MarkSweep 9y agoWas it Pownce? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pownce https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pownce
- tpowell 9y agoI think it was Pownce, as Kevin Rose co-founded it and he was associated with Tech TV all the way back to 2002 (I think). Blast from the past...
- itsoggy 9y agohttps://identi.ca/ https://identi.ca/
- deerpig 9y agoHe really pushed identi.ca, there was a nice community there back in the day. It became a bit of a refuge from the noise on twitter. I had my identi.ca account in my sig file up until a couple of years ago. But I have largely lost interest in any of the social media platforms though I use twitter from time to time.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- memsom 9y agoAll of them. He flirted with them all. Jaiku, Identi.ca, App.net, etc. He was always trying to find an alternative. I've been listening on and off to him since my first iPod, so over 10 years. As each new one came out he jumped on it. He was the same with Android/iOS and Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
- simooooo 9y agoLeo laporte is not a cool guy.
- el_benhameen 9y agoCare to elaborate? I never got too into his shows, but he never seemed particularly uncool to me.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sirmike_ 9y agoDon't bother. his (simooo) opinion is no more valid than anyone else. Not coincidentally anyone can see Leo puts out original content for a very long time. From the beginning. No matter what I hope he always is able to keep doing it.
- simooooo 9y agoNot opinion. Facts
- sschueller 9y agoBiased but some context: totaldrama.net
- DashRattlesnake 9y agoThat just looks like a website made by a hateful obsessive.
- sschueller 9y agoI think the site is run by an ex-employee. There is a lot of drama about nothing, however there are some cases were Leo is clearly not a "good" person especially when it comes to how he treats his employees.
- the_unknown 9y agoOn a related note - it turns out that he's been running the New Screen Savers show for a while now - didn't even know about it. Happy memories watching the original show - I'll have to give this a try. Oh, and some of the old team pop in Kate Botello, Patrick Norton, etc. So there's one benefit to suing Twitter - it gets your name in the media again and all of us old timers can reminisce and catch up on the new series.
- RainaRelanah 9y agoI watched the first ~30 episodes and honestly tried to love it, but I couldn't do it. These days I find Leo so insufferable and conceited that not even my nostalgia for TSS can save the new show. If they spread the role of hosting around more like they did back in the day I would love it. But most episodes didn't feel like TSS, they felt like The Leo Show with Leo Laporte starring Leo Laporte.
- wierdaaron 9y agoWhat we liked about The Screen Savers and ZDTV/TechTV in general was that it was the first time somebody was actually talking to a wide audience about the computers, the web, and gadgets. It was ice water in a desert. Now, there is no premium on tech content. One no longer needs to seek out Leo Laporte to hear what’s going on in tech or roundtable discussions about it.
- RamenJunkie_ 9y agoI find Leo seems to come and go with being annoying. You can tell when he's stressed or something in the background becomes he gets really awful. I kind of wonder if it would be better if he were in front of the camera a bit less in an overall sense for the network.
- Zigurd 9y agoIt also highlights what a one-man-band is TWiT: It depends heavily on Leo Laporte being a first tier broadcast media professional. Because Leo can't or won't hire a second person of his skill level as a radio voice, if there is anyone like him available at any price, TWiT doesn't scale. Moreover, most people are increasingly used to internet-first voices in the media they consume. You don't need to be able to hold forth for hours without an "uh" or a misplaced breath to have a hugely popular and highly remunerative show. And, on top of that, while podcasts are thriving, video is thriving even more. "Video natives" are the best paid people you've never heard of. TWiT is in danger of becoming a relic.
- jaimehrubiks 9y agoI find it quit nonsense. And moreover, why don't they sue twitch then too in the first place?
- Grue3 9y agoI upvoted because Twitch is a really interesting case. The Levenshtein distance between the trademarks is closer, and Twitch is pretty much entirely focused on video, which makes it encroaching on TWiT's domain of business.
- jjeaff 9y agoThe CEO of twitch presumably didn't have a conversation with Laporte and promise to never get into the video business.
- dezren39 9y agoYeah, I think the thing is though that you have to enforce trademarks early and evenly. You can't enforce for one significant breach and not for another. If you want to allow certain kinds of trademark use then you need to come to a licensing agreement for those specific uses, either by allowing certain forms of use or by allowing specific people to use it. Not a lawyer.
- hthh 9y ago"Copyright infringement" is not "trademark infringement" and shouldn't be in the title.
- mankash666 9y agoHow is this any different from patent trolling? Nobody confuses TWiT for Twitter, or vice versa. I don't think TWiT should be in a position to make money off Twitter's entry into video, just like some random patent troll shouldn't be able to monetize ludicrous patents
- Shank 9y agoThe difference is that somewhat haphazardly, Ev created an oral agreement and then confirmed the existence of the agreement in an email stating that Twitter wouldn’t violate it. There’s now a paper trail saying that Twitter wouldn’t do this, and that basically confirms that at minimum a breach of contract has occurred. Patent trolls wait forever to take action on patent use only after a company gains susbstantial profits. On the other hand, a good example of patent enforcement would be initiating legal action at the first sign of infringement — before profits are made.
- mankash666 9y agoFor the contract to be valid, there needs to be "cause" for confusing TWiT with Twitter. Most people would agree that there's no cause here, voiding the "contact"
- jVinc 9y agoFrom TFA: "At that time Williams, on behalf of Twitter, acknowledged the confusion which likely would arise from the use of TWITTER in the marketplace, as well as instances of actual confusion which already had arisen." It doesn't matter what "most people would agree" if the defendant themselves are on record acknowledging the problem. I've never heard anyone confuse Apple (The computer company who sell music) with Apple (The record company founded by the beatles), yet you'd be a fool to not see the problem in the overlap when Apple were on contract saying they'd only use it in the computer industry and then started venturing into the music industry.
- jjeaff 9y ago
- parasubvert 9y agoLeo must be running into hard times. Usually this sort of move is a play when your main business isn’t thriving.
- oliwarner 9y agoSeems like a legitimate trademark defence. Twitter have gone lumbering into Leo's registered trademark class: "IC 041. US 100 101 107. G & S: Entertainment in the nature of visual and audio performances, and musical, variety, news and comedy shows." What do you think they'd do if he started a microblogging service under the TWiT name?
- rdl 9y agoIf TWiT wins do they have to take over Twitter? Seems like a sneaky way for Twitter to get a full-time CEO.
- stevenicr 9y agoWhen twitter was new and fresh, I could see this happening... there was a time when more people had heard about TWIT than twitter... but those times have changed, now I'd assume it's many orders of magnitude that people have of twitter and no clue that TWiT exists or has ever existed. Maybe twitter could just buy them out and make them a part of the core service somehow - everyone can get money and press and benefits. Guess the lawyers make money either way.
- jhgg 9y agoFor reference, this is the "contract" which TWiT are arguing. It's a reply from Ev, to an e-mail from Leo. The full contents are at the bottom of the filing[1]. >Just got your letter. Don't worry: We're not expanding to audio or video under the Twitter brand. That news story was the result of an over-zealous production company (and extremely sloppy reporting by AP). See our post: http://blog.twitter.com/2009/05/were-not-making-tv-show.html http://blog.twitter.com/2009/05/were-not-making-tv-show.html There's a world of difference between "we are not" vs. "we will not". I am not eating a sandwich right now, but I will most definitely at some point in the future. One would have to be a fool to interpret this as an agreement to never expand into audio/video in all of perpetuity. Furthermore, Twitter's own trademark filing (since 2007) lists "video and audio" as part of the goods and services provided by their brand. Perhaps this argument should have been made in 2007, or when it was published for opposition (which is basically the USPTO's way of saying 'hey, if you are concerned about this trademark infringing your rights... speak up!') in Feb of 2008 (however no such filing was placed according to TTAB's records), not 2018. [1] https://www.scribd.com/document/369311229/TWiT-vs-Twitter https://www.scribd.com/document/369311229/TWiT-vs-Twitter
- nunez 9y agoThis is so weird. There has to be more to the story than this. Hardly anyone in TWiT's demographic would confuse it with or prefer it over Twitter.
- torgoguys 9y agoHa. Leo has been talking about this for a long time, bringing it up here and there and various shows. He tends to not get that sympathetic of an ear from his own co-hosts, nor do I have much sympathy. The amount of confusions that arises is probably minimal and is an issue that exists primarily in his own head. I also noticed that in the linked complaint, TWiT still insists on calling their productions "netcasts" instead of podcasts. The market isn't similarly confused over requiring an iPod to listen to podcasts, Leo...
- SoupAficionado 9y agoObvious attempt at a cash grab, as nobody is following Leo Laporte's productions. TWiT uploads on YouTube often have a few hundred views after months, nobody would confuse this tiny little podcaster with Twitter the social network.