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I like your copyright idea in general even if I think maybe the formula could be tuned a bit. And I agree with your reasoning about patents although I don’t kno

I like your copyright idea in general even if I think maybe the formula could be tuned a bit. And I agree with your reasoning about patents although I don’t know enough about other industries to know if something patent-like may still be necessary (for example, as much as we hate big pharma for charging huge amounts on patented medicine, they probably do need a guaranteed payoff to incentivize the massive cost and risk of going through FDA trials). I don’t think trademarks need to be taxed like that, basically every single consumer product has a trademark and I’m positive you could work around the nested trademark thing. I think trademarks are good to disincentivize fraud or misleading consumers (you shouldn’t be able to infringe <highly trusted brand> with low quality crap), the problem is the legal system allows frivolous application of trademark, like one company suing another for using the same common word (eg Monster) in a tangentially related domain, or another company trying to enforce trademark of something that shouldn’t even be in scope of trademark, like a color. Especially for trademark I think we need to prevent its weaponization for anticompetitive/extractive purposes, more than we need to restrict or disincentivize its legitimate use. That probably requires some really clever lawyers with expertise moreso than HN comments

mjevans 3y ago
Thinking about TM more: * Corporations / Individuals, should pay more _per mark_ when they file for more marks. Again, I don't even have a good idea of an initial proposal for the fee, just a good reason for wanting that. The more brands, characters (names attached to types of likenesses) and products locked up the less space there is for competition and innovation. Also, again, this isn't supposed to start out as a huge cost, it should be reasonable for an individual to have a trademark or two on something they're trying to create as a brand. Maybe smaller groups (including of 1 / individual) could have a lower registration fee on their first N terms. However this also needs to be balanced against effects we currently see with patent trolls. Human review (with a HIGH bar for pass!) and a requirement for a real product that consumers can purchase should be hard requirements. * The additional tax per product should just be a flat n%, maybe even less than 1%. The administrative overhead of having different tax rates outweighs any benefits with my initial thoughts of a cap at 2%.
- opportune 3y ago
  I just think you’re misunderstanding the problem, it’s not that trademarks are polluting the space of available terms - it’d be ridiculously punitive to tax McDonalds billions to trademark the Big Mac, Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar - it’s that a single trademark like “Monster Energy” can be abused well outside the domain it should apply within. And also that trademarks are being granted/enforced in domains they shouldn’t, like in colors or fonts. The way trademarks are supposed to work is that your “Monster Energy” trademark applies within the domain, so you can block “Super Monster Soda” but have no case against “Fetish Monsters Diaper Playpack”. Similarly I think it’s fair that a big concrete, skinny clown holding a hamburger at a burger shop (with a big yellow capital M sign, selling Big Macs and McFlurries) across the street from an actual McDonalds would be penalized as trademark infringement without McDonald’s having to pay billions a year in trademark costs. What we need to disincentivize and prevent is this: https://thehustle.co/monster-energy-thinks-it-owns-the-word-monster/amp/ https://thehustle.co/monster-energy-thinks-it-owns-the-word-...
  - Applejinx 3y ago
    Weirdly, this started with Monster Cable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8848477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8848477
xigoi 3y ago
How about making it impossible to trademark common words (words that appear in lowercase in a dictionary)? Maybe it would incentivize companies to come up with more creative names.

mjevans 3y ago

Thinking about TM more: * Corporations / Individuals, should pay more _per mark_ when they file for more marks. Again, I don't even have a good idea of an initial proposal for the fee, just a good reason for wanting that. The more brands, characters (names attached to types of likenesses) and products locked up the less space there is for competition and innovation. Also, again, this isn't supposed to start out as a huge cost, it should be reasonable for an individual to have a trademark or two on something they're trying to create as a brand. Maybe smaller groups (including of 1 / individual) could have a lower registration fee on their first N terms. However this also needs to be balanced against effects we currently see with patent trolls. Human review (with a HIGH bar for pass!) and a requirement for a real product that consumers can purchase should be hard requirements. * The additional tax per product should just be a flat n%, maybe even less than 1%. The administrative overhead of having different tax rates outweighs any benefits with my initial thoughts of a cap at 2%.

opportune 3y ago
I just think you’re misunderstanding the problem, it’s not that trademarks are polluting the space of available terms - it’d be ridiculously punitive to tax McDonalds billions to trademark the Big Mac, Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar - it’s that a single trademark like “Monster Energy” can be abused well outside the domain it should apply within. And also that trademarks are being granted/enforced in domains they shouldn’t, like in colors or fonts. The way trademarks are supposed to work is that your “Monster Energy” trademark applies within the domain, so you can block “Super Monster Soda” but have no case against “Fetish Monsters Diaper Playpack”. Similarly I think it’s fair that a big concrete, skinny clown holding a hamburger at a burger shop (with a big yellow capital M sign, selling Big Macs and McFlurries) across the street from an actual McDonalds would be penalized as trademark infringement without McDonald’s having to pay billions a year in trademark costs. What we need to disincentivize and prevent is this: https://thehustle.co/monster-energy-thinks-it-owns-the-word-monster/amp/ https://thehustle.co/monster-energy-thinks-it-owns-the-word-...
- Applejinx 3y ago
  Weirdly, this started with Monster Cable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8848477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8848477

xigoi 3y ago

How about making it impossible to trademark common words (words that appear in lowercase in a dictionary)? Maybe it would incentivize companies to come up with more creative names.