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Facebook owner is behind $60M deal for Meta name rights
- inDigiNeous 5y agoI kinda hate it that any company can just decide start using these commonly used words as their brandnames. Like Meta, or Alphabet. Wtf man. Now everytime somebody says "That's so Meta" or talks about meta they are going to be reminded of this company probably. Or is it because Metamphetamines begin with Meta ? Is it like digital crack ? They already have Instagram, for that instant gram of social media gratification.
- wincy 5y agoI mean in that case at least it's methamphetamines not metamphetamines. What's really dumb is that it's become strangely trivial for a trademark to be preserved. Everyone says "just use a Kleenex" but somehow saying "use Kleenex brand facial tissue" is what lawyers pretend everyone says.
- chrismcb 5y agoIt is hard to preserve a trademark You have to differently fight it. Your post a good example. The first one is killing the Kleenex trademark that is why the lawyers say to use the other statement. We have a ton of words that used to be trademarked. Elevator, escalator, zipper to name a few.
- wk_end 5y agothere's no such thing as "metamphetamines". Presumably the word you're looking for is "methamphetamine", which doesn't begin with "meta". Although I suppose both "methamphetamine" and "meta" do begin with "met", but then, so do "metropolitan" and "meteorological", amongst a few others. Also, FWIW: methamphetamine isn't crack. Crack is a form of cocaine. Methamphetamine is what's commonly referred to as "speed".
- belval 5y agoSince we're being pedantic, meth is not speed. Speed is a street name for amphetamines which aren't quite the same thing.
- saberience 5y agoSince we're being annoyingly pedantic, I would like to correct you and say "Metamfetamine" is a valid and used synonym for "Metamphetamine." https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Methamphetamine https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Methamphetamine
- Mandatum 5y ago> methamphetamine isn't crack. Other parts of the world started calling whatever drug was wreaking havoc in their country crack in the mid-2000s, likely as a result from hearing about "crack" from US pop culture. As such, meth is now called crack in Australia and New Zealand. Crack cocaine doesn't exist there.
- noah_buddy 5y agoOur modern conception of IP, trademarks, and the like, only makes sense through the lens of gatekeepers maximizing monetary investment and not any sense of commons. The system is designed to be this way.
- zeckalpha 5y ago1. It is Meth-, not Met-amphetamines. 2. Your handle may fit the same pattern of appropriation you are complaining about… indigenous is spelled differently and unlike Meta/Alphabet, describes a set of people.
- petre 5y ago1. Depends on the language. In most languages it's different variations of metamfetamin. "In organic chemistry, meta indicates the positions of substituents in aromatic cyclic compounds." Although I'd rather associate the company formally known as facebook with metastasis.
- inDigiNeous 5y agoYeah you caught me there. If it was easier to change the username on hacker news I would have done that already. But what gets is me these companies can trademark and fight anybody who tries to use that commonly used term, I cannot fight anybody as an individual even though my username would have been Meta in all the social media platforms before Facebook decided to own this name.
- nightfly 5y agoApple
- bamboozled 5y agoIt's funny because during everyday life the company Apple doesn't interfere with my use of the word apple at all?
- Mirioron 5y agoIt does for me: Apple gets automatically capitalized by my phone when swyping. That's about it though.
- codetrotter 5y agoI ate an apple. My favorite fruit is apple. I have an apple in my backpack. The teacher has an apple on her desk. I saw an Apple. I picked up an Apple. I threw the Apple away. I mean the Apple fruit. Hehe, the autocorrect was smart enough to understand some places where it shouldn’t capitalize the word “Apple”, but it mistakingly capitalized the word for a lot of sentences as well. In all of the sentences in the paragraph above I wanted the lowercase variant. I am typing this on an Apple iPhone.
- Mirioron 5y agoI ate an Apple. My favorite fruit is an Apple. I have an Apple in my backpack. The teacher has an Apple of her desk. I saw an Apple. I picked up an Apple. I the the Apple away. I mean the Apple fruit. This is Swype on my android phone.
- alberth 5y agoThe parent might be referring to the dispute between The Beatles (Apple Corp) and Apple Computer (which later became Apple Inc.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
- 5y ago
- pazimzadeh 5y agoFacebook is metastasizing (spreading out because you have exhausted the local energy supply and need to spread out to stay alive.
- gkoberger 5y agoI get your point, but... nobody is going to call it Meta, much like nobody calls it Alphabet. They pick names like that for that reason, I think... they're generic and bland and make it really hard to get riled up about. "Meta is evil" doesn't have the same ring to it, ya know? (Not to add fuel to the fire, but Block is another recent example of this.)
- jjulius 5y agoTangentially, it seems as good of a time as any to wonder what ever happened with that other Meta company that popped up on HN a while back[1]. Their website said to expect an announcement "in the coming weeks" (it's been 42 days). Particularly amusing is that the founder showed up in the comments after most of the discussion was over, said he welcomed questions, and then refused to answer questions about what his company even does. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29074406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29074406
- bhhaskin 5y agoI have seen multiple comments debunking it as a domain squatter.
- digianarchist 5y agoIt’s a good time to remind folks that owning a domain doesn’t give you automatic trademark rights over the name. However owning the name prior to the trademark being registered does appear to give you some protection. I know this because I settled with Politico.
- hnburnsy 5y agoMeta Financial Group, Inc. hit the jackpot with not only the Meta naming rights but they also have the stock market ticker symbol CASH. That must be worth some you know what. Do the exchanges allow for the sale or transfer of a ticker symbol?
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoI'm very surprised "CASH" was not already taken. Perhaps your suggestion is correct and they had bought it from someone else.
- geoduck14 5y ago>Do the exchanges allow for the sale or transfer of a ticker symbol? Oh, I really hope so. Tableau had "DATA" before they were bought by Salesforce
- tmsh 5y agoBeige Key is kind of like the Copper Key in Ready Player One? Did Mark just go HAM in his book club the month that they read Ready Player One like two years ago? /s