4 ms·

Same thing happened last month with Amazon. AWS decided to roll out a new product called CodeGuru, that was a well established site on Windows development (code

Same thing happened last month with Amazon. AWS decided to roll out a new product called CodeGuru, that was a well established site on Windows development (codeguru.com). That's the end of the road for them. https://thehftguy.com/2020/08/03/amazon-blatantly-taking-over-the-codeguru-trademark-from-microsoft/ https://thehftguy.com/2020/08/03/amazon-blatantly-taking-ove...

AsyncAwait 6y ago
Wow, that's depressing. Maybe there needs to be some sort of a collective trademark ownership org small projects and sites could go to, which wouldn't sue somebody proactively for i.e naming their GitHub repo similarly, but would come up when legal at these large companies was running the name of their new product past existing trademarks.
- user5994461 6y ago
  Read the article, it's explaining how to lookup trademarks ;) https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks-application-process/search-trademark-database https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks-application-process/search-... The trademark codeguru is not deposited by anybody, neither CodeGuru nor Amazon did their homework. Anyway the 20 years of usage should have precedence over just depositing a trademark.
  - AsyncAwait 6y ago
    My point was that it probably wasn't deposited by codeguru.com because it costs a decent chunk of money to do so and websites don't necessarily have the resources, but if there was a pooling fund, maybe they would. You'd still run the risk of Amazon just not looking it up or caring, but the legal grounds would be much more on your side, abet I agree that 20 year precedence should be strong enough in itself.
    - pmorici 6y ago
      Does it? I registered a trade mark for my small business. Didn’t require a lawyer and the fee wasn’t more than a few hundred dollars per 5 year period as I recall.
      - AsyncAwait 6y ago
        > I registered a trade mark for my small business. Didn’t require a lawyer and the fee wasn’t more than a few hundred dollars per 5 year period. That's fair. However a few hundred dollars could still be quite a lot. Especially for a small website or an open-source project where this could be basically all their donations. In codeguru.com's case however, I'd grant you that they probably did have a decent enough income to afford a trademark registration, just maybe not when they started and by now it really wasn't on anyone's mind.
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
The difference with CodeGuru is that, AWS didn't sue them, its Google which decided to bury it in the search results in favour of something relatively new and the context of the article seems to be why AWS named their product like that. So, this doesn't seem like a good advise to me for that context - >Major lesson here, if you run a major site in the US and did not deposit the name (maybe it grew organically over the years?), now is a good time to do it. Can AWS trademark CodeGuru now? I don't think it will be able to do so with basic prior art rules as actual MS CodeGuru has supposedly existed for over 20 years dealing with programming but different core purpose than AWS CodeGuru. So, I don't think the suggestion to trademark our existing product name in fear of a monolith taking it over seems absurd. Trademark/Patents doesn't automatically provide justice, like any other legal affair it's the 'power' to enforce that TM/Patent via a court that counts and the monolith always has more power[1]. What needs to be done here is changes to trademark/patent laws and justice system which doesn't automatically put those without money at disadvantage like the 5 member meal planner company having pear logo just because I think Apple wants to put in their own meal planner app. [1]https://hitstartup.com/myths-about-patents-and-trademarks-in-startups/ https://hitstartup.com/myths-about-patents-and-trademarks-in...

AsyncAwait 6y ago

Wow, that's depressing. Maybe there needs to be some sort of a collective trademark ownership org small projects and sites could go to, which wouldn't sue somebody proactively for i.e naming their GitHub repo similarly, but would come up when legal at these large companies was running the name of their new product past existing trademarks.

user5994461 6y ago
Read the article, it's explaining how to lookup trademarks ;) https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks-application-process/search-trademark-database https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks-application-process/search-... The trademark codeguru is not deposited by anybody, neither CodeGuru nor Amazon did their homework. Anyway the 20 years of usage should have precedence over just depositing a trademark.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  My point was that it probably wasn't deposited by codeguru.com because it costs a decent chunk of money to do so and websites don't necessarily have the resources, but if there was a pooling fund, maybe they would. You'd still run the risk of Amazon just not looking it up or caring, but the legal grounds would be much more on your side, abet I agree that 20 year precedence should be strong enough in itself.
  - pmorici 6y ago
    Does it? I registered a trade mark for my small business. Didn’t require a lawyer and the fee wasn’t more than a few hundred dollars per 5 year period as I recall.
    - AsyncAwait 6y ago
      > I registered a trade mark for my small business. Didn’t require a lawyer and the fee wasn’t more than a few hundred dollars per 5 year period. That's fair. However a few hundred dollars could still be quite a lot. Especially for a small website or an open-source project where this could be basically all their donations. In codeguru.com's case however, I'd grant you that they probably did have a decent enough income to afford a trademark registration, just maybe not when they started and by now it really wasn't on anyone's mind.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

The difference with CodeGuru is that, AWS didn't sue them, its Google which decided to bury it in the search results in favour of something relatively new and the context of the article seems to be why AWS named their product like that. So, this doesn't seem like a good advise to me for that context - >Major lesson here, if you run a major site in the US and did not deposit the name (maybe it grew organically over the years?), now is a good time to do it. Can AWS trademark CodeGuru now? I don't think it will be able to do so with basic prior art rules as actual MS CodeGuru has supposedly existed for over 20 years dealing with programming but different core purpose than AWS CodeGuru. So, I don't think the suggestion to trademark our existing product name in fear of a monolith taking it over seems absurd. Trademark/Patents doesn't automatically provide justice, like any other legal affair it's the 'power' to enforce that TM/Patent via a court that counts and the monolith always has more power[1]. What needs to be done here is changes to trademark/patent laws and justice system which doesn't automatically put those without money at disadvantage like the 5 member meal planner company having pear logo just because I think Apple wants to put in their own meal planner app. [1]https://hitstartup.com/myths-about-patents-and-trademarks-in-startups/ https://hitstartup.com/myths-about-patents-and-trademarks-in...