
"Hackathon" Has Been Trademarked in Germany - 67726e
https://register.dpma.de/DPMAregister/marke/register/3020120063403/DE?lang=en
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jcampbell1
Germans apparently allow all sorts of English words to be trademarked. I ran
into the problem buying Google ads, and the ads would get rejected for a
trademark violation. The whole campaign would get messed up because I targeted
english speakers worldwide and the ads got rejected because the word
"immersion" is trademarked in Germany.

Edit: I think Google has since improved the error message and gives a message
like "Ad is running, but cannot be run in all regions due to a trademark
issue." Adwords used to just reject the ad with ominous text "trademark
violation".

~~~
tlrobinson
"Germans apparently allow all sorts of English words to be trademarked."

Like "Apple"?

~~~
jcampbell1
You are right, that may not be a fair characterization. The problem I see is
how a list of trademarked words becomes blacklisted for use in advertising. I
am fine if Germans want to let any word be trademarked, and then sort it out
later in the court system. But we have a situation where the trademark list is
auto-uploaded to Google and stops the word "hackathon" from being used in ads
in Germany, thus a real problem.

~~~
jakobe
The automatic trademark blacklist in Google adwords is really idiotic even if
the trademark is valid. I once tried making an ad for my Mac app, and I
couldn't include the word "Mac" or "Mac OS" in the copy because they are
trademarks.

~~~
PostOnce
I had literally the exact same issue. They said I had to get them paperwork
from Apple's legal department, ignoring Apple trademark page saying it's okay
to use the Mac trademark to sell a Mac app which I forwarded to them with an
explanation.

My exact ad said "Try _____, a better way to _____ for Windows and Mac".

They didn't mention the Windows trademark. Pfft.

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thomasbachem
Their official blog post and explanation: <http://www.young-
targets.com/formation-of-tech_hub-started/>

There's a pretty big discussion/shitstorm going on in the Berlin Startups
Facebook group.

The trademark owners claim that they want to use the licensing fees to support
non-commercial events, quotation: "I think it's worth trying. If not, there
sure will be other ways to finance non-commercial projects. I any cases it's
better that it's a trademark of a non-commercial project, than of some cease-
and-desist law firm."

I totally disagree with that whole idea though. Makes us Germans look
ridiculous :-).

~~~
thomasbachem
They removed the image. Screenshot:
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/279887/pm/03-05-2013%201...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/279887/pm/03-05-2013%2019-42-07.jpg)

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brandon_wirtz
You can trademark anything that isn't already trademarked, but you have to
defend the trademark if you want to enforce the trademark.

Trademarks are a lot like patents, the due diligence when filing is on the
filer for the most part. The agency only checks against the filings. So you
can get a trademark for Hackathon, but if you tried to enforce it you would
lose if there are prior uses by others.

You could get a Trademark in an alternate context. Like if you decided to
combine a marathon with a machete and have a run through the jungle. That
could be a new use for Hackathon that would be unlikely to cause confusion in
the market.

That said I'm sure they will send some C&D's and scare some people in to not
using the term.

The "Hon" trademark for a Baltimore restaurant springs to mind. Where the
owner tried to extract money from the city of Baltimore, but she ended up
dropping the trademark after community backlash.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _You can trademark anything that isn't already trademarked_ //

That's absolutely wrong in the UK and USA. In Germany their English language
guidance notes say:

" _The following are also excluded from registration: promotional statements,
general advertising slogans and word sequences that have become customary in
the current language as fixed expression._ "

So it's wrong there too.

>"the due diligence when filing is on the filer for the most part"

In some jurisdictions but by no means all.

I'm surprised there were no oppositions filed, guess TM registrations are off
most peoples radars. Of course the TM lacks distinctiveness and so is probably
going to be struck down, doesn't stop them wielding it as part of a shakedown
though.

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Roritharr
I've organized a few hackathons in Germany and am pretty disgusted by finding
this.

I've already contacted a few fellow organizers to find out what we can do
about this.

~~~
Roritharr
I've just heard through the grapevine that this was created as a protective
trademark, to prevent the exact thing we're afraid was going to happen. An
official statement from the CEO of the company will follow soon.

~~~
NicoleSimon
And the earth is flat.

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kintamanimatt
Why?

The trademark has been filed in Germany by a German events directory. Their
main focus appears to be club events, not nerd events and indeed there is only
one listing from mid last year for a hackathon.

Are they getting into the trademark troll business on the side?

~~~
martin_k
It's the same agency that does <http://www.nerd-zone.com/>, which seems to be
partially funded by public money.

Edit: The agency also has a word mark on "Nerd Zone", both seem to be
motivated by this: <http://www.nerd-zone.com/hackathon>.

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wambotron
All part of my plan to make "Hackgasm" the next big thing.

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hdragomir
Hackathons are actually pretty popular here, especially in Berlin. I'll keep
you updated if I hear of anybody running into trouble because of this.

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mkoble11
This just shows that "hackathon" is becoming more popularized.

Today, _everything_ is a "hackathon" which is rather annoying, IMO. In the
past year or so, we've seen legal hackathons [1], marketing hackathons [2] and
more.

Now, more and more corporations are starting to get into the hackathon game -
eg. Campbell's disaster a few months back [3].

With popularity comes consequence, but perhaps the "spirit" of a hackathon is
what matters: getting people to GTFO of their element, come together and
create something in a short period of time.

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/17/legal-hackathon-
law...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/17/legal-hackathon-lawyers-
hackers-brooklyn-law-school_n_1431038.html)

[2] [http://atdc.org/2012/07/atlanta-hosts-worlds-first-
marketing...](http://atdc.org/2012/07/atlanta-hosts-worlds-first-marketing-
hackathon.html)

[3] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5086013>

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C1D
This has been trademarked in Germany so it shouldn't be a problem for people
in other places, I presume (correct me if I'm wrong); but, this will be a
problem for Germans. A quick google search shows that there are Hackathons
happening in Germany and I'd like to know if the holder will take legal
action.

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Udo
It's a shame this hasn't been posted anywhere before the deadline for
Opposition Proceedings had been reached (March 7th 2013). Whether it would
have been possible to stop this at all is another matter, of course.

~~~
dj-wonk
What about this...? A simple tool might be useful as a first line of defense
against silly filings. First, the tool could monitor trademark filings.
Second, it could compare against common words, perhaps from a dictionary.
Third, it could score filings using a 'frivolity' score. Fourth, perhaps it
could expose its a moderation queue via a mailing list or web interface.
Fifth, maybe it could be gamified?

~~~
unreal37
Hackathon doesn't appear in any dictionary.

Maybe you should use Google Search result count. If a phrase doesn't appear
frequently online, its ok to trademark. If there are 10 million results, it
should be flagged.

~~~
dj-wonk
Wiktionary has a very inclusive list of definitions. It does include
hackathon: <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hackathon>

For such a tool to be most useful, I'd recommend gathering data from several
places (such as DuckDuckGo, Wiktionary, Wikipedia). Also, it would be better
not to be tied to fixed thresholds (such as 10 million results); rather, it
would likely be better to construct a feature vector and try out various
machine learning approaches.

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jschuur
... in Germany.

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troymc
I went to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) site and searched for the
word "hackathon" in their (US) trademark database and it didn't find anything,
so US-based hackathons should be fine (for now).

In Germany, I'm sure the Germans can come up with some long-German-word-
like-'marathon-of-hacking'-that-means-the-same-thing-as-hackathon, if they
haven't already.

~~~
rubinelli
Hopefully, they will get the trademark preemptively this time. I vote for
"Codefest".

~~~
moontear
Codefest it is. Like the sound of it.

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wazoox
In the late 90's some guy trademarked "Halloween" in France, because
"Halloween" wasn't in any French dictionary back then. He made an incredible
fortune by going after all of those (starting with McDonald's and Disney)
making Halloween-based advertising.

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eno2001
Germans brothers called 'Samwer' copycat any existing successful website like
ebay, amazon etc. Now they probably will trademark any single existing word.
So typically german, just like chinese...

~~~
voidiac
I can't see any connection to the Samwers or any of their companies in this
case.

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kirualex
Getting really sick of this corporate bulsh*t

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mattfieldy
I'm sorry, but are you fucking kidding me?

