6 ms·

I have lost count of the number of times I have seen this exact post on HN because some company I never heard of used a common word for their company/product an

by slg 5y ago

I have lost count of the number of times I have seen this exact post on HN because some company I never heard of used a common word for their company/product and Facebook, Apple, Google, etc. came out with a product with the same name. I'm not going to excuse any of the behavior by these big companies, but at a certain point you have to take responsibility for introducing this risk by naming your company a short, commonly used word that is found in the dictionary. It was only a matter of time until this issue would pop up.

asddubs 5y ago
The first thing that pops into my head is that kid that got really mad at zefrank because he stole the name for his vblog series. The name was "the show"
orhmeh09 5y ago
Do small companies owe their names to big companies who have the resources to look into it and choose a different name?
- filoleg 5y ago
  If the big company was in the legal ownership of that trademark for nearly 4 years, yes.[0] Direct quote from the link: >"[...] Zuck's non-profit, of course, the one he runs with his wife, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, actually bought out a company called Meta back in 2017." 0. https://news.yahoo.com/trademark-hurdles-facebooks-meta-rebrand-163000229.html https://news.yahoo.com/trademark-hurdles-facebooks-meta-rebr...
- Brian_K_White 5y ago
  There is no small company here, just an opportunist.
mmahemoff 5y ago
That's fine, but big companies shouldn't be able to claim ownership of a common word either, just because they have more lawyers.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  There are maligned incentives; companies that don't litigate and defend their IP can lose the right to their IP. Trademark and copyright law is a complete mess, and the internet only made it worse.
jlawer 5y ago
Yeah, but with a product its more of a problem. Calling your Widget Company "Widgets Inc.". Facebook is able to call their product "Facebook Widgets". The problem is this is direct trademark infringement. The trademark is for a business, and will have overlap with Facebook. Facebook can try and argue that the trademark is invalid, but at the end of the day if meta.company can defend the trademark, there is going to be a settlement because renaming AGAIN isn't going to be very desirable. This could cause an Apple Records vs Apple Computer case where certain businesses are restricted for facebook. However as both history and this event shows, facebook will just plow ahead and pay the costs later. Given opportunity costs, and everything, it likely is the most economically rational move. Having so much money that they know they can cover any verdict / settlement, and having limited - no personal liability at the director level, facebook can continue to act unconscionably. The only way you will stop them acting like this is to either extend the liability to management or so oversized and unreasonable punitive damages that they actually take a step back.
bryans 5y ago
I think you should ask yourself why you're willing to expend so much energy shaming a startup for choosing a short name, but not expend the same amount of energy denouncing corporations for doing things that are blatantly illegal. Perhaps the issue here isn't that a company chose the "wrong" name, but that large amounts of folks like yourself have become so complacent, that they're just willing to accept corporations illegally steamrolling any startup who has the nerve to defy them. Despite your insistence that you're not excusing large corporations for their behavior, you've just done exactly that by attempting to shift the blame.
- telendram 5y ago
  Or maybe this is a classical troll scheme, like we have seen a hundred times, black money used to confiscate a public good (a common name) and ransom it to highest bidder, all this with the entire backing of Uncle Sam's own lawyers. And maybe you are yourself a troll.

by slg 5y ago

asddubs 5y ago

The first thing that pops into my head is that kid that got really mad at zefrank because he stole the name for his vblog series. The name was "the show"

orhmeh09 5y ago

Do small companies owe their names to big companies who have the resources to look into it and choose a different name?

filoleg 5y ago
If the big company was in the legal ownership of that trademark for nearly 4 years, yes.[0] Direct quote from the link: >"[...] Zuck's non-profit, of course, the one he runs with his wife, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, actually bought out a company called Meta back in 2017." 0. https://news.yahoo.com/trademark-hurdles-facebooks-meta-rebrand-163000229.html https://news.yahoo.com/trademark-hurdles-facebooks-meta-rebr...
Brian_K_White 5y ago
There is no small company here, just an opportunist.

mmahemoff 5y ago

That's fine, but big companies shouldn't be able to claim ownership of a common word either, just because they have more lawyers.

missedthecue 5y ago
There are maligned incentives; companies that don't litigate and defend their IP can lose the right to their IP. Trademark and copyright law is a complete mess, and the internet only made it worse.

jlawer 5y ago

Yeah, but with a product its more of a problem. Calling your Widget Company "Widgets Inc.". Facebook is able to call their product "Facebook Widgets". The problem is this is direct trademark infringement. The trademark is for a business, and will have overlap with Facebook. Facebook can try and argue that the trademark is invalid, but at the end of the day if meta.company can defend the trademark, there is going to be a settlement because renaming AGAIN isn't going to be very desirable. This could cause an Apple Records vs Apple Computer case where certain businesses are restricted for facebook. However as both history and this event shows, facebook will just plow ahead and pay the costs later. Given opportunity costs, and everything, it likely is the most economically rational move. Having so much money that they know they can cover any verdict / settlement, and having limited - no personal liability at the director level, facebook can continue to act unconscionably. The only way you will stop them acting like this is to either extend the liability to management or so oversized and unreasonable punitive damages that they actually take a step back.

bryans 5y ago

I think you should ask yourself why you're willing to expend so much energy shaming a startup for choosing a short name, but not expend the same amount of energy denouncing corporations for doing things that are blatantly illegal. Perhaps the issue here isn't that a company chose the "wrong" name, but that large amounts of folks like yourself have become so complacent, that they're just willing to accept corporations illegally steamrolling any startup who has the nerve to defy them. Despite your insistence that you're not excusing large corporations for their behavior, you've just done exactly that by attempting to shift the blame.

telendram 5y ago
Or maybe this is a classical troll scheme, like we have seen a hundred times, black money used to confiscate a public good (a common name) and ransom it to highest bidder, all this with the entire backing of Uncle Sam's own lawyers. And maybe you are yourself a troll.