
“Please note, the hashtag is for our paying advertisers” - dogecoinbase
https://twitter.com/EdmondActive/status/761404345908736000
======
xg15
Note though that they only claim "marketing and advertising" for the hashtag
[1]. They don't deny anyone from using it in an ordinary Twitter discussion.

So all the people that now try to invoke the streisand effect against them are
not even touching their claim, however valid or invalid or may be. If
anything, they make the hashtag more valuable for advertisers.

This reminds me of incidents in the past were colors (some special shade of
magenta, Deutsche Telekom) or letters (greek alpha, Canon) were trademarked,
apparently without much discussion. As I understood it, the reason was that a
trademark does _not_ forbid general use by the public. It "only" forbids using
it as brand identifiers and for advertising.

Whether hashtags _can_ actually be trademarked is of course a different
question. But I don't see how it would be more crazy than trademarking a
color.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/EdmondActive/status/761406212122431488](https://twitter.com/EdmondActive/status/761406212122431488)

~~~
Karunamon
Their claim isn't important at this point. Invoking the Streisand effect by
that tone-deaf tweet has just driven its marketing value into the toilet by
way of negative association and associated shitposting.

So what if they're "right"? They still lost.

~~~
sosborn
A friend of mine always had a great saying: "You are dead right but you are
dead."

------
basseq
Note that the IOC is trying the same thing with #Rio2016 #TeamUSA and other
hashtags.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-
trending-36915565](http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-36915565)

~~~
darkarmani
What? I've been saying TeamUSA since high school when playing friendly games
against people from other countries. How can you possibly trademark that?

Rio2016 is also a little insane. I guess no one else is going to rio in 2016.

~~~
Spivak
> What? I've been eating Apples since I was a child. How could you possibly
> trademark that?

You're falling into the same trap as some a few others -- a generic term
doesn't necessarily disqualify it from being trademarked.

~~~
soared
Well sure, but the real trap is completely not understanding trademarks. As a
person (not a company, not representing a company, etc.) you can
say/use/whatever with a trademark.

Trademarks only affected another business's use of that trademark, not
individual people. Its truly comical that people don't understand this.

------
libeclipse
Well, they're on the front page of HN. I think they won guys.

~~~
astrodust
Hash-tag Streisand Effect.

------
minimaxir
Some companies/startups _intentionally_ invoke bad press/unpopular opinions
under the theory that any-publicity-is-good-publicity.

From the comments made in the thread by Edmond, this does _not_ appear to be
the case in this circumstance, and the tweet is a genuine case of marketing
ignorance.

~~~
jbob2000
No, this is intentional. They're using the hashtag for advertising. What good
is a hashtag if nobody is using it? Of course they need to look ignorant,
that's the fuel for the viral fire.

They got everyone, hook, line, and sinker.

~~~
mattdeboard
[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor)

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

~~~
imron
It's not being attributed to malice though, it's being attributed to
ingenuity.

I agree with your parent post, this has been done intentionally to get people
to use #shopedmond.

------
rictic
Baseless speculation: trademarks must be defended or you lose them. This
company trademarked a hashtag and got legal advice that they must at least
make a visible effort to control the term.

Kleenex e.g. must fight the conception that their trademarked name is a
generic term for a tissue.

~~~
jrochkind1
You need to defend it against people using it generically. You don't need to
stop people from using your trademark to refer to your trademarked product
name it is trademarked to refer to.

~~~
jahewson
I don't think it's that clear cut. The magazine is "Edmond Active" while the
hashtag is #shopedmond, which is neither the name of the business or their
product.

However, the city on question is Edmond, OK and they're encouraging you to
shop there, so erm, "shop edmond". Not exactly a convincing trademark.

------
Vanit
Reminds me of the sites that tried to assert that you needed permission to
link to them. GG your page ranking

------
the_watcher
THere's a midwestern dry cleaner suing the IOC over this right now. This seems
frivolous, at first, but it's actually a legal grey area in that it doesn't
seem like anyone has ruled specifically on it.

------
DanBC
There's a nice writeup of the law here:
[http://www.socialmedialawbulletin.com/2016/07/can-you-
tradem...](http://www.socialmedialawbulletin.com/2016/07/can-you-trademark-a-
hashtag/)

It seems the owner of the mark is only claiming ownership in oklahoma (which
may be why the mark isn't found in the USTPO lists)

[http://newsok.com/article/5512593](http://newsok.com/article/5512593)

EDIT: I'd be interested to know if these tweets fall foul of US rules about
promoted content.

[https://twitter.com/EdmondActive/status/761416672167157761](https://twitter.com/EdmondActive/status/761416672167157761)

[https://twitter.com/EdmondActive/status/761411987578298368](https://twitter.com/EdmondActive/status/761411987578298368)

------
JustUhThought
I had originally trademarked this phrase with Spanish style exclamation marks,
but then put it in the public domain, because I loves me so folks. Let all
your sharp pencils be free! Write baby, write!

And,,, seriously though, this is why technology is NOT democratic by default,
and why people must actively, forcefully work to democratize technology based
social, community, and cultural infrastructure. If it can't be found outside
of human civilization in a form ready to be picked up or stumbled over, and
someone gets to it before you, they'll likely claim it for their own. Lame.

------
erdevs
Does anyone have a quick backgrounder on what is going on here?

~~~
celticninja
seems as if the twitter user that asked people to not use the hashtag
"#shopedmond" unless they were a paying customer as his company had
trademarked the rights to the hashtag "#shopedmond", the rest of the twitter
users were then taking the piss out of him for his attempt to a) prevent
people using the hashtag and b) for trying to trademark it.

Although to be fair he wanted to stop businesses using it not the public in
general, but why let the facts get in the way of a good old fashioned rabble
rousing.

~~~
nl
Pretty sure "he" is female - or at least the contact for their advertising and
social media sales is female - or at least was in 2014[1]

[1]
[https://issuu.com/edmondactive/docs/edmondactive_janfeb2014](https://issuu.com/edmondactive/docs/edmondactive_janfeb2014)
(pg 3. Note down the bottom of that page they claim the trademark to
#shopedmond"

~~~
celticninja
As gender isn't an issue here, that I used he/him is irrelevant to the
discussion. It wasn't meant as sexism.

------
soared
The ignorance in this thread is amazing, but I suppose this site is for
software and not business people. So many of these comments are completely
misinformed and incorrect about how trademarks/etc work.

HN comments are mostly quality when on topic, but toss out another discipline
that people assume to understand with their common knowledge and.. well, here
we are.

------
aaron695
Could someone please TL;DR me a story about this company?

What do they sell?

How long have they been around?

Do you think their product is ok even if they do silly things on twitter?

~~~
drewcrawford
I grew up in this city, so it is surreal to see it on HN.

Edmond is a special place that you must understand to make any sense of this
story. It is effectively Republican Heaven. It is a small town, well-eduated,
white, wealthy, growing, and suburban. Lots of small business owners and
people who have made their own $1M, which they naturally achieved through some
combination of hard work and attending church regularly so that your customers
and business partners will trust you. Cost of living is shockingly low. All
the economic, racial, and social issues in our country are happening somewhere
else very far away, and the biggest threat Edmond faces is that the faraway
people may and/or already have begun to change things and therefore ruin
Republican Heaven.

This company exists in that context, capitalizing on a high concentration of
small business owners, offering them what effectively amounts to advertising
services that theoretically convert into walkins to your hair salon or
whatever.

Edmond has a strange relationship with social media. On the one hand, social
media is big business, and big business is always, always good. On the other
hand, social media was created by a bunch of faraway Blue-State Liberal
Commies. So in general they would be one part in favor of exploiting it, one
part completely ignorant about how to do that, and one part determined to do
it differently than the Liberal Commies do.

All of that to say, forming a cartel around a hashtag is an entirely plausible
business model for Edmond. If a business used it without paying, well, that's
cheating, and cheating is a sin, and you'll never sin your way to making your
$1M. All you have to do is put out a passive aggressive note reminding people
you have a trademark or something and the bad actors will be sufficiently
shamed to change their ways.

And the social media backlash is, obviously, just a bunch of Blue-State
Liberal Commies who live too far to visit your hair salon anyway, so nobody
cares about them or their opinions.

The real problem this company faces is proving that a hashtag translates into
increased hair salon appointments, which is the kind of problem Edmond
actually cares about. Small business owners take much more seriously than SV
culture the concept of value for money. If it's not effective advertising it
will be dead in the water, with or without any help from outside.

~~~
robk
Thanks for writing this in a neutral tone without insulting those whose
political persuasion you disagree with since you fled to one of the coasts.

~~~
drewcrawford
Then it may surprise you to learn I still live in the South :-)

I understand how it could be read as a bit of a partisan attack, particularly
around this time of year. In reality though, I think every place has its own
dysfunction. It's just that Edmond's particular dysfunction is both important
to understanding the story, and very foreign to HN readers, whereas detailing
the dysfunctions of other areas might "provide balance" but would not help
anyone make sense of this story.

But to provide balance anyway, Edmond is very different than most people's
idea of "red area". The population is very highly educated. The public school
system is universally loved, and there's even a public university that is
excellent. So when you hear someone express their hatred for "big government"
it is in the context of empowering a local government that provides actual
services that are very competently administrated, not, e.g. a desire to burn
everything down.

It is also one of the only semi-urban areas I can think of where minimum wage
is definitely a living wage, jobs are available to anyone who wants to work,
"corporation" means your next-door neighbor's 10-employee plumbing company,
etc. So I think an argument can be made that "red" policies make much more
sense there than otherwise expected.

It is really the sort of place that produces a William Buckley [0]. It's a
pragmatic, intellectual, moderate branch of conservatism, that is growing
concerned about its own extinction. Based on this election, I think it's a
pretty justified fear.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Buckley_Jr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Buckley_Jr).

------
someotheruser1
When I see things like this, I always make a mental note never to patronize
the business (or in the case of a city/state, never to visit).

Maybe the small effect of voting with my wallet would be more likely to be
noticed if I sent a note: "Hi there, because of $ACTION_I_DISAGREE_WITH, I've
decided not to patronize your business anymore"

~~~
DanBC
Were you ever going to advertise with whoever the fuck EdmondActive is?

------
gargravarr
Some people just have to learn the hard way what saying such a thing on
Twitter will lead to.

------
xbmcuser
Was a nice piece of social marketing and engineering. His hashtag is trending
now.

------
lettercarrier
Seems to me the octothorpe is an AT&T or Bell Labs invention. I recall some
crazy discussion in Murray Hill before I knew anything about Unix or
telephony... LOL

------
sharemywin
one way to get people talking about your company/magazine.

~~~
lostlogin
If that was the aim, posting text as an image with a legal spin in a font
that's difficult to read... Yes, this sounds like something a corporate would
do.

------
daemonhunter
Sigh, as a great sign of a flawed system you can own a trademark for something
as simple as shopping in a city. Our system is _FLAWED_.

------
ChuckMcM
Ok, that was hilarious.

------
jrochkind1
people unclear on the concept.

------
Overtonwindow
This was a very funny joke. Bravo. #shopedmond. Can't use because copyright.
LOL. Made my day. They've got a sense of humor over there. Keep up the good
work you savvy netziens.

~~~
criddell
Trademark, not copyright.

