
Reddit gay gamers to fight Gaymer trademark - jeffreyfox
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-01/25/reddit-gaymers
======
h2s
Smells like a shitstorm brewing. I'd advise him to walk away from this one
quietly. There's a real risk of invoking the wrath of Reddit's Internet Hate
Machine on this issue. All it'll take is a few links to hit the front page and
this could very suddenly become a lot more hassle than a trademark is worth.

~~~
biot
Or license it to them for $1. The subreddit can then put a (R) sign next to it
and say "Used under license from Chris Vizzini / gaymer.org". With some
ingenuity, Vizzini could work with them to turn it into a community brand and
make gaymer.org the central hub. Trying to fight the community rather than
work with it is inconceivable!

~~~
tech-no-logical
as someone who follows /r/gaymers I can say that this will _never_ be accepted
by that community. the cease-and-desist mr. vizzini sent was seen as a sort of
declaration of war, and mr. vizzini's posts on reddit only added to that
feeling.

~~~
biot
A classic blunder. Never get involved in a trademark war with Reddit.

------
timdorr
> Vizzini went on to add, "I had an idea 10 years ago, made it happen, put the
> money and hours into it, the idea picked up steam and I trademarked it.
> That's how the system works."

Holy shit. You're building a community, not a product. The two operate _very_
differently and you're going to get nowhere if you treat it like a commodity.
He should do the smart thing and license the trademark to /r/gaymers.

------
sergiotapia
I side with Vizzini on this one. He trademarked it plain and simple and
shouldn't be stripped of his trademark. I hope the Reddit community members
lose this one.

It's not like the guy demanded they stop using the term, he even let them use
his trademark on their subreddit. But for some people that's just not enough.

Best wishes to Vizzini.

\---

> "The issue I have is when the Gaymer name is used. It takes 10 years of my
> work, money, blood, sweat and tears and directs it to another website. Trust
> me, there were many tears. When you have no idea about PHP/SQL and you have
> to figure out how to fix a database, you will end up in tears."

Yeah, I'd be pissed if some random internet mob wanted to strip me of
something I built.

\---

~~~
newishuser
A trademark is a legal monopoly on a name. The issue isn't whether he worked
hard or not, it's whether he deserves to have a legal monopoly on the use of
the word "Gaymer". As much as you argue "he trademarked it plain and simple"
these people have the right to say "we don't think there should be a legal
monopoly on that word, plain and simple."

People should really think twice about what they try to remove from the public
domain. It's a bit selfish and arrogant to think you can own words like
"Gaymer".

~~~
pdeuchler
Completely agreed. It was incredibly selfish of Bill Gates to trademark
"Windows", just like it was arrogant for Steve Jobs to trademark "Apple". I
eat apples all the time! I look out windows all the time! These trademarks
offend me.

These words should not be trademarked. Plain and simple.

~~~
SEMW
Sarcasm doesn't make a poor comparison into a good one.

The arguments for invalidity here are: (1) generic use, that 'gaymers' is in
customary use in online communities to mean a gay gaymer, and (2)
descriptiveness, that it's a combination of two descriptive words that are
both characteristics of the relevant class (i.e. communities of gay gaymers).

Neither of those is true of "Apple" for computers. Both'd be true of "Apple"
for _apples_ (i.e. the fruit) -- so if Apple started selling fruit, they
wouldn't be able to register "Apple" as a trademark for that class of goods.

"Windows" arguably _is_ descriptive of MS's OS, though not as strongly as
"gaymers" is for gay gamers. Thing is, "Windows" now has _acquired
distinctiveness_ : everyone associates it with Microsoft's operating system,
as opposed to other systems which also use windows. That gets around
descriptiveness (and customary use). That's not true for gaymers: "gaymer"
clearly isn't exclusively associated in the average gaymer's mind with Chris
Vizzini's site (as opposed to /r/gaymers, or just gay gamers in general).

(N.B. IANAL, and in particular I'm only familiar with EU trademark law. I'd be
surprised if US law was that different, but I don't know for sure, so the
above may not be accurate for US law).

------
ck2
I don't know whose side to take. Someone educate me?

Bandaid is trademarked and people use it all the time, xerox too.

Was the reddit group formed before 2007 ?

I noticed the other day my pillow has a trademark on the word "Jumbo". Where
are the people getting upset about that?

Oh I see now from the EFF release:

 _As today's petition notes, the term "gaymer" had been in widespread use for
years before Vizzini applied for a trademark. In fact, there's even a
GaymerCon conference._

~~~
gabemart
> Was the reddit group formed before 2007 ?

In early 2011, /r/gaymers had a mere 600 subscribers [1] so it was likely
formed some time in 2010.

Custom subreddits were added in 2008 [2] which is thus the earliest possible
point that /r/gaymers could have been founded.

However, there is certainly what I as a lay-person would call prior art.

There's a Yahoo! group for "gaymers" founded in 2000 [3].

    
    
        [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20110226103548/http://www.reddit.com/r/gaymers
        [2] http://blog.reddit.com/2008/01/new-features.html
        [3] http://games.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/gaymers/

~~~
ck2
Ah well then no trademark should be allowed then.

That's obviously where he got the domain name idea then and did a trademark
the following year.

Remember the days when you could find a word that wasn't registered as a
domain?

Even the fact he went for the .org leads me to believe the .com had to be in
use already. Yup, registered and paid parking since 2002. Interesting he
didn't bother to try to use the trademark to grab the .com

~~~
RyanGWU82
Prior art is irrelevant for trademarks -- a trademark doesn't have to be
unique for you to use it. There was an item called a "macintosh" before the
name Macintosh was trademarked. The word "dropbox" had been used in file
sharing software long before the YC startup existed. Even the creator of
gaymer.org doesn't claim to have invented the word "gaymer."

You can claim a trademark as long as no one else has already claimed the same
name in the same context. Once you have established the trademark, you can
prevent others from using that name, even if they have been using it for a
long time.

Note that the "same context" is why there's unlikely to be a conflict with
Gaymers Cider. In particular, the gaymer.org trademark only applies to social
networks.

(IANAL, so I may have some details wrong here.)

~~~
brazzy
> Once you have established the trademark, you can prevent others from using
> that name, even if they have been using it for a long time.

You can prevent others from using it _in the field the trademark was
registered for_ to identify a _product or service_ not approved by the
trademark holder.

Most statements of trademark law being ridiculous for allowing people to "own"
common words hinge on ignorance of these details.

------
eclipticplane
Thanks to the EFF and everyone involved in this. Reddit itself is being very
helpful in this, too.

------
Nursie
Hmmm... is the trademark domain and/or country specific?

Because there's a cider company in the UK that has a claim to that name going
back well over 150 years.

~~~
antihero
It's a different "category". Like Apple (hardware) and Apple (records), it was
okay for them to share the name until Apple (hardware) moved into the music
business.

------
fitzpasd
I suggest people also read the trademark holders recent post on gaymer.org

[http://www.gaymer.org/index.html/_/site-news/help-save-
gayme...](http://www.gaymer.org/index.html/_/site-news/help-save-gaymer-erase-
the-hate-r72)

~~~
tech-no-logical
... wherein mr. vizzini is the hero who personally wrested the term 'gaymer'
from the evil claws of the bigoted internet. there's enogugh references from
before 2003 to prove that this is a load of bs.

