4 ms·
Alphabet's X has been around for quite a while, too. I don't know how they let him get away with that, unless "X" is perhaps too generic to trademark.
by mintplant 2y ago
Alphabet's X has been around for quite a while, too. I don't know how they let him get away with that, unless "X" is perhaps too generic to trademark.
- a1o 2y agoWasn't it named as Moonshot Factory? I get a sense that at some point it was part of Google itself.
- fooker 2y agoGetting separated from Google is what effectively killed it. At Google, these efforts had unlimited funding without much oversight. At Alphabet, it's basically like running a VC funded startup.
- whywhywhywhy 2y ago>I don't know how they let him get away with that, Because Elon's X.com predates Alphabet's X by 16 years...
- tobr 2y agoThe domain name? Or a trademark?
- efdee 2y agoX.com was a bank funded by (amongst others) Musk in 1999. They later merged with Confinity to found PayPal.
- echoangle 2y agoOk, but don’t you lose the trademark if you don’t actively use it?
- colejohnson66 2y agoNot necessarily. It's generally a challenge that causes you to lose it. But 'X' is so generic, it's arguable that it might not even be eligible for trademark protection.
- 015a 2y agoOwning the domain name isn't a singularly valid way to assert trademark control; it has to be used. Elon had an "X" company way back when, but it became Paypal; they didn't really use the X name in a public fashion for very long at all. The reason is probably more-so that Google's "X" isn't apparently a legal entity; its a division within Google. So, it doesn't have consumer sentiment around it, its not a product name they're selling, its not a registered entity, etc. In other words: "Skunkworks" as a term originated from a division at Lockheed, now its a term many companies use, oftentimes in legal & public ways, but Lockheed really doesn't have grounds to stop them from doing so.
- pridkett 2y agoFunny you should pick “Skunkworks”. The way that Lockheed Martin uses it, “Skunk Works”, is trademarked and all rights reserved. Even when Lockheed talks about it on their website[0] they put the all rights reserved symbol by it. They go to court to try and protect it - as was the case in Australia, which they lost. [0] https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/who-we-are/business-areas/aeronautics/skunkworks.html https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/who-we-are/business-are...
- 015a 2y agoFair! I hadn't known they'd trademarked it and at least tried to enforce it.
- SoftTalker 2y agoI idly wondered if Google owned the "alphabet" of .company names: a.company, b.company, etc. But it appears not.
- rsynnott 2y agoIt almost certainly is.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoWho will stop Elon Musk? Google? Haha.. That is laughable. Musk is bigger than anything America has ever seen.
- tarsinge 2y agoA stock market crash? Much of his wealth and (pre-government) career is about stock pumping.