
4Chan Founder Moot Sends Cease and Desist Letter to Startup Moot.It - lovekandinsky
http://betabeat.com/2012/11/4chan-founder-moot-sends-cease-desist-letter-to-startup-moot-it/
======
ryanhuff
I noticed that Exhibit 1 shows a Google search of "Moot", apparently as
support to the claim that the term "Moot" is commonly associated with Poole.
However, this search was done from a browser logged in by Chris Poole's
attorney. Given Google's attempt to provide more personalized results, I
wonder how much influence the attorney's relationship has on the search
results from Exhibit 1.

It may be a moot point in this case, but considering the changing search
landscape, attorney's need to be more careful about how they use Google search
results (and others) as evidence.

~~~
geuis
This is irrelevant. I just performed a search for the term 'moot' on Google
and Bing. On both sites, I searched in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. I also
performed the searches in anonymous and non-anonymous modes in all browsers.

In every case, the wikipedia page for Chris Poole showed up within the top 5
results. His Twitter page and links to 4chan show up in the top 10 results in
one order or another in all results as well.

I'm not taking sides either way, but the attorney's logged in status doesn't
have any relevance in this instance.

~~~
ryanhuff
It may not in this case (as I did mention). My point was in reference to the
general practice of attorney's using internet data sources that may provide
personalized results. In the case of Google, the attorney's relationships and
search history (researching 4chan, etc) may influence evidence submitted if
not careful.

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gnarbarian
Firm legal standing or not, getting confused with 4chan probably isn't a good
idea for any startup. IMO the largest worry for Moot.it is risking some sort
of retaliation from 4chan's user base. They are excellent at shitting things
up.

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
I actually think 4chaners might react against Christopher/moot. Anon stands
very specifically for complete and total freedom of speech. Saying "whatever
the fuck you want" is more important to anon than protecting some imaginary
trademark moot thinks he has.

~~~
ProblemFactory
It's difficult to say what Anonymous stands for, because it's not a single
organisation or group. Anyone can take the label of Anonymous when advocating
a cause, and "become part of it".

Before Anonymous got "good guy" publicity for supporting Wikileaks, people
calling themselves anonymous were mostly known for trolling: finding
emotionally sensitive people and communities, and harassing them both online
and offline for their own amusement.

~~~
anonymousab
The userbase has always been about schadenfreudic justice and retribution from
a perceived slight of the day. moot - or rather, his attorney - fits the bill
to a t.

------
randomaccount5
It seems they have judged the potential for "free" marketing to be worth the
risk of a backlash from the 4chan community.

Given they are in the business of allowing users to post content, the
risk/reward looks to be heavily weighted towards having their service (in the
best case!) being spammed with shocking content 24/7. They haven't thought
this through.

~~~
msbarnett
> It seems they have judged the potential for "free" marketing to be worth the
> risk of a backlash from the 4chan community.

Moot is a verb. To moot something means "to raise it as a subject for
discussion". They're selling discussion forum software with a domain name,
moot.it, that essentially means "discuss it". It's a clever, relevant name and
domain hack given what they do.

The overlap with Chris Poole's screen name is at least as likely entirely
coincidental as it is some scheme to ride off the coattails of Poole.

------
grabeh
They have respectfully suggested a name change because they know they do not
have a strong case. I find the letter a surprising move from someone so
aligned with internet counter-culture.

I think it's fair to say that a large majority of internet users would have no
idea of the founder of 4chan. Plus the term is being used in a descriptive
allusive sense from what I can tell. A firm rebuttal is in order.

~~~
Firehed
As someone who's heard the name "moot", I would have (prior to reading this
article, which shows otherwise) assumed that a service named "moot.it"
offering discussion forums is associated with Moot/Chris Poole.

Preventing this kind of confusion is the entire point of Trademark law, and
whether the company's name did this intentionally or not, I think Moot has a
reasonable cause for concern and case.

~~~
grabeh
Trade mark law seeks to balance the interests of people with distinctive
brands to protect against the interests of the wider public in being able to
use words in a descriptive sense to describe their product.

I personally think moot is very much descriptive of the 'discussion' in
general. Moot, the 4chan creator would most probably argue the name has
acquired distinctiveness through usage but this generally requires a high
evidential threshold in terms of the reasonable person having familiarity with
the term as a unique identifier. Whilst if 4chan had been called moot from the
start he would have had a stronger case, I do not think the reasonable
internet user would be aware of moot's name let alone identify it with online
discussion.

------
saurik
> Without being an expert on the law, it didn’t seem right that an individual
> could try to strong arm me out of using a name that bears only a tangential
> relationship to his product and online persona.

I fail to see how "moot", the name of... well, moot's... online persona bears
"only a tangential relationship" to said online persona.

> Although I wouldn’t necessarily call 4chan a “Goliath” of the internet,
> Poole has certainly taken the Goliath position on this.

...just because someone is large, doesn't mean they are de facto wrong or
impervious to harm, and it certainly doesn't make it appropriate to try to win
the audience with a silly David vs. Goliath analogy: you need a serious
argument here, not cute soundbites.

Personally, I feel like moot has a good argument here: what he has been
working on for a while now, both with 4chan and Canv.as, is "the future of
online discussions"; if I see a company with his name and that same mission, I
bet I would have been confused.

~~~
msbarnett
The problem here is that "his" name is also a common verb in the English
language that means "to raise something for discussion".

I'm not sure he should get to prevent any discussion forum software from using
that word, or the clever dns hack moot.it to advertise said software that lets
you "discuss it", because he happened to choose a common-ish verb as a screen
name, years ago.

~~~
thaumaturgy
"common" is a stretch -- maybe it's common as a regional dialect. Regardless,
that's somewhat irrelevant: "moot" is far more commonly used to refer to
Christopher Poole in the context of online discussions. (Even a quick glance
at the search results of e.g. HN comments with the term "moot" confirms this.)

Keep in mind that UPS has successfully trademarked _a color_ , as have many
other companies; "Apple" is a trademark, "Time" is a trademark, "Shell" is a
trademark, "Caterpillar" is a trademark ... and odds are, as you read each of
those common words, you knew exactly which company holds the trademark.

Whether or not "moot" _should_ be a trademark is largely philosophical and not
a debate I feel like putting any energy into. However, that moot _can_ be a
trademark even if it's a "common" word seems obvious at this point.

~~~
msbarnett
>"common" is a stretch -- maybe it's common as a regional dialect.

Some googling and brief dives into etymological references are suggesting to
me that the original usage is more common in Canada and the UK than the US.

> Regardless, that's somewhat irrelevant: "moot" is far more commonly used to
> refer to Christopher Poole in the context of online discussions. (Even a
> quick glance at the search results of e.g. HN comments with the term "moot"
> confirms this.)

Eh, I think you're overgeneralizing from your own perspective here (and
searching HN to back yourself up is only magnifying, not mitigating, that
effect). There's an awful lot of English-speaking internet out there beyond
the bubble that wouldn't know 4chan from foursquare.

> Whether or not "moot" should be a trademark is largely philosophical and not
> a debate I feel like putting any energy into. However, that moot can be a
> trademark even if it's a "common" word seems obvious at this point.

I don't disagree. But note that it's Chris Poole's lawyer who's claiming that
Moot can't be used as a trademark on the basis that Chris Poole and his screen
name are so famous that they're entitled to Right of Publicity protection
under New York law, which strikes me as stretching that law rather past its
original intent (is Rand Corporation violating Paul Rand's Right of Publicity?
Does Richard Gere have a case against Top Gear?).

~~~
thaumaturgy
> _Eh, I think you're overgeneralizing from your own perspective here (and
> searching HN to back yourself up is only magnifying, not mitigating, that
> effect). There's an awful lot of English-speaking internet out there beyond
> the bubble that wouldn't know 4chan from foursquare._

4Chan has 22 million uniques per month and a million posts per day [1], and
seems to be referenced regularly on all of the other "big" online forum sites.
And, when Time gave in and acknowledged the poll results for Christopher Poole
as their most influential person of the year, they referred to him first as
"moot" and the stunt picked up coverage in mainstream publications like the LA
Times [2].

So, I think you may be underestimating 4Chan's influence. But, I'll concede
that I may be overestimating it as well.

[1]: <http://www.4chan.org/advertise> [2]:
[http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/04/4chan-
tim...](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/04/4chan-time-
moot.html)

------
samarudge
moot - adjective 1\. open to discussion or debate; debatable; doubtful: a moot
point. 2\. of little or no practical value or meaning; purely academic. 3\.
Chiefly Law . not actual; theoretical; hypothetical.

-Via Dictionary.com

Given the nature of the service (being commenting/discussion) I struggle to
see how this would stand up in court, however I'm not a lawyer.

------
duiker101
I would like to express my opinion on a more general factor that can be seen
also in this occasion. I find really interesting the use of screenshots from
Google search and other sources from the internet like blogs, forums, twitter
facebook etc... on paper to prove something. I get the feeling that this
things, used as "Exhibits" or whatever else, are totally out of place, they
are permanent ink to save something that is absolutely not permanent like the
internet. The internet is not something static, it can change from one day to
another, Moot today can be known as a nickname of a person, tomorrow it can
totally be the name of a startup. I really feel this are two worlds colliding,
we are trying to apply our old laws to a world that doesn't flow as the old
one. I don't know why but I wanted to express this.

~~~
waltermorgan
Either side can produce the evidence, weigh each other's evidence, make their
arguments before the court, and ultimately the court makes a decision.... or
they decide they're both fucked in certain ways and settle. the way it works,
either side can try to make their case... in principle makes sense, the only
problem is it takes a lot of time.

------
Jabbles
I wonder whether Moot's lawyer discussed this with him beforehand, or if it's
just standard procedure that has attracted a lot of attention this time round.

Secondly, did Moot.it's lawyer threaten to sue Moot's _lawyer_? Can you do
that? Can you sue the lawyers of your opponents? I imagine that could get very
nasty.

~~~
petercooper
With some minor exceptions, you can sue anyone for anything in the US. You
just won't get very far unless you have a reasonable basis.

~~~
icelancer
>With some minor exceptions

The federal government, for one.

------
dromidas
I think Moot.It should strongly consider the likelihood that they will be
LOIC'd to death before they even are able to make enough customers to pay to
get unDDoS'd to begin with.

There aren't really many groups I'd be worried about pissing off en masse as a
startup except perhaps anonymous.

------
tlrobinson
Well that's the first time one of my Hacker News comments
(<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4726644>) has been used as evidence in
a legal document.

------
readme
Moot is a dictionary word. Not trademarkable. C&D was a waste of money. He
would have done better to just ask them nicely to stop.

Ultimately Moot could use his social clout to get them to switch names. IANAL
but I'm pretty sure it's a legal name.

~~~
mylittlepony
Good point. I've seen many of these cases. My guess is some lawyers don't even
care, they will get paid anyway, they can only win.

------
mvkel
Isn't the bigger story that Moot.it competes directly with Chris Poole's new
venture, Canv.as?

~~~
dkroy
It would be if it did, but it doesn't. Both technologies are pretty neat, but
if you go check out each of them you will notice that they are very different.
Canvas is an image-centric social website, which also does a significant
amount to replace desktop editing tools for desktop. While moot is Disqus with
websockets.

Edit: Oh, and a forum component. Also, I think Moot.it are trying to sell a
product, while Poole seems to be building another community.

~~~
mvkel
Maybe competes was the wrong word. I was speaking more about the trademark
itself. Technically they'd both be in the same "class," so Poole has more ammo
for first usage, Etc.

------
ArekDymalski
Quite ridiculous. Actually yoomoot.com would be more entitled to send such a
letter than Poole. Now everyone who was nicknamed 'Shorty' in college back in
82 will start suing everything what moves.

------
charonn0
I predict a rule 34 campaign when/if moot.it opens for business. Just sayin'

------
loceng
Isn't it a moot point, since moot is a word?

~~~
dangrossman
So are "apple", "time" and "caterpillar", yet they are all federally
registered trademarks whose holders have successfully prosecuted others for
their use. Being a common word is not an absolute barrier to trademark
protection.

~~~
snogglethorpe
But those are huge and well-established brands; using their names _is_ likely
in some cases to cause confusion amongst consumers. Preventing such confusion
is, as far as I'm aware, the goal of trademark law.

Moot-the-person on the other hand is quite obscure; nobody knows who he is or
associates the word "moot" with him other than a small handful of people in
one online community. I.e. it's _not_ a well-established brand, and using the
word isn't likely to cause confusion or mis-association for the general
public.

~~~
veemjeem
To the general public, no, but in this case the product is similar to 4chan,
so users may be confused. If Moot.It had sold server hardware instead, I'm
sure there would be no valid case.

~~~
loceng
The website isn't called Moot, though. That's where I see it being a grey
area.

------
cyber
I'll definitely be following this case! ;)

