I'm a paid user of Threads[.com] – No trademark? | Hacker News Reader

I'm a paid user of Threads[.com] – No trademark?

threads.com

63 pointsashitlerferad79 comments

Tangential but I used Threads at a previous company and really liked it. I don't know how anyone could get a company that's already built around Slack to switch, but if you are starting fresh I think Threads offered a much nicer experience for async comms and especially for long discussions of consequence. Highly recommend giving it a shot!

$10/user/mo sounds expensive. And the free option looks so tiny it's a non starter. I think both Slack and Threads should be a little more generous with their free packages. Maybe like 5 users and unlimited history or self hosted but no support.

Perhaps for the individual, but for enterprise contracts, that's pretty cheap. Slack charges $12.50 per user-month so this handily undercuts it.

Mind sharing what was better? tia

It was better at two things:

1. not interrupting me with pings all day but helping me to catch up on messages in batches

2. Much better format for long conversations, proposals, and discussions

As an lawyer with a bit of an intellectual property background, this seems like such an obvious trademark infringement suit that I'm virtually positive Meta paid Threads a decent sum to use the name while they sign an NDA.

If they haven't, might Meta just be banking on being able to drag out any legal action forever or make it impossibly costly to pursue this?

I’ve seen Microsoft and similar companies get their ass whupped for this.

It’s really an open and shut case, somebody in another thread just pointed out that “threads.com” really has a registered trademark, they might not even need that given they have a history of using the name.

FB can pay or change the name if they want to get out of the doghouse.

I found roughly 30 registrations for “Threads” (mostly expired) and it didn’t seem that any of them are Facebook or threads.com; threads.com seems to have a very similar service to Facebook Threads, somebody who looked at the screenshots might confuse one for the other.

The fact of Threads.com already using the name “Threads” in the market might give them a case against Facebook, it would possibly pay handsomely for them to talk to an IP lawyer to see if they have any rights in this case. Many big companies have been careless about naming things, remember how Microsoft initially called “OneDrive” “SkyDrive”? They just didn’t do their due diligence and it wasn’t the first time for the,.

IANYL.

Found it: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87522273&caseType=SERIAL_...

trademarks have specific scopes you can see that in the "goods and services" section right

IANYL, but yeah.

The services this registration covers (in Class 42) are: "Platform as a service (PAAS) featuring computer software platforms for use in project management and collaboration for the technology and media industries that allows organizations and users to create, upload, share, discuss, store, and search content meant for users of the platform; none of the foregoing specifically targeting decision support among healthcare professionals and facilities"

You shouldn't be able to get a trademark on "Threads," any more than you should be able to get a trademark on "Doors" if you owned a company that sold doors called Doors. "Doors.com," fine; "Doors.net," fine, "The Great ...doors," fine. Facebook will protect Threads with trademarked logos and color schemes, not by pretending that they own the concept of threads.

Also, if you want to name your car company "Threads" or even your clothing company "Threads," fine. If you want to name your thread company Threads, you can't have a trademarked word.

Appropriate username.

IANYL.

Threads does in fact have a trademark registration for THREADS: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87522273&caseType=SERIAL_...

Why not? You won't be able to trademark "doors" if you sell doors. But if you make it, day the name of your band, you can. It doesn't stop people from using the word doors in relation to well doors, or a door company. But it does stop someone else for using it for another band name. Basically you can't trademark a common word in a common usage, but you can trademark it for an uncommon usage. Now whether you should or not is a different story. Common words don't help SEO much.

If not Doors, then what about Windows?

Facebook has 269 registered trademarks

https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe

... and "Threads" ain't one of them

To this day I wonder if the trademark search site runs on Windows 98

I'm sure they've upgrade since then, at least Windows 98 SE.

Windows ME?

I worked at a place for six months where I worked on an impossible number of projects that were hosted on Windows particularly including the really strange such as hosted on MS Access. (Something that could work pretty well or pretty poorly depending on how it was configured.)

I worked on a patent search that was way better than the USPTO search and it was a lot of work.

I'd imagine trademark search would be easier and it looks like you can get that out of a data dump just like you can for patents.

https://bulkdata.uspto.gov/

What patent search? Does it still exist?

See https://ip.com/ I don't know if it has a public demo anymore.

The search engine used a neural network autoencoder for "more like this" queries and did a great job if you wrote a paragraph describing your invention and want to find related inventions, both in patent and non-patent literature. If it hasn't been made obsolete by Sentence BERT, however, it soon will be.

Not sure if they've upgraded but you used to not be able to permalink to a search result.

… oops, unfortunately it doesn’t work. If I didn’t already have side projects coming out of my ears I’d go home and code a better trademark search up.

Haha totally, they could use the help! What's the system of "three sided cards"?

Most of the images I post here

https://mastodon.social/@UP8/media

have to do with "three-sided cards"; these have many uses not least I can throw down several of them and take a picture to show on social media.

Couldn't it just be under another name just like all the Apple names they trademark before launches?

That’s not really how trademarks work.

IANYL.

Threads owns one for THREADS: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87522273&caseType=SERIAL_...

It covers (in Class 42): "Platform as a service (PAAS) featuring computer software platforms for use in project management and collaboration for the technology and media industries that allows organizations and users to create, upload, share, discuss, store, and search content meant for users of the platform; none of the foregoing specifically targeting decision support among healthcare professionals and facilities"

Meta had a product previously called Threads, there's lots of companies called Apple. They are billed as a slack replacement and not a twitter replacement. I'm not seeing the issue.

Both are in the communications area. Does the trademark office differentiates between slack-replacement and twitter-replacement?

If your laywers have FB amounts of money they do.

> Does the trademark office differentiates between slack-replacement and twitter-replacement

Because they both operate in the replacement space?

"communications" is in the comment.

There are just 45 trademark classes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_(Nice)_Classific...

I think these are both in class 38 “Telecommunications”

IANYL, but the registration by Threads for THREADS is in Class 42: "Platform as a service (PAAS) featuring computer software platforms for use in project management and collaboration for the technology and media industries that allows organizations and users to create, upload, share, discuss, store, and search content meant for users of the platform; none of the foregoing specifically targeting decision support among healthcare professionals and facilities"

IANYL, but in general, it depends.

See the trademark registration owned by Threads for THREADS, here: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87522273&caseType=SERIAL_...

The services the registration covers (in Class 42) are: "Platform as a service (PAAS) featuring computer software platforms for use in project management and collaboration for the technology and media industries that allows organizations and users to create, upload, share, discuss, store, and search content meant for users of the platform; none of the foregoing specifically targeting decision support among healthcare professionals and facilities"

There aren't a lot of technology companies called Apple. Trademarks are related to the business.

IANAL but it seems like Threads.com has a real case here

Perhaps Meta's attorneys will do the 'nice' thing and pay to license the name from them. Apple paid Cisco millions for the right to use the name iOS/iPhone, and Cisco retained the right to continue to use the trademark.

Apple records (Apple corp) had an issue back in the early apple computer days. Then when Apple released its itunes store, Apple records really had an issue, but there was some litigation and they settled..

"The settlement includes terms that are confidential, although newspaper accounts at the time stated that Apple Computer was buying out Apple Corps' trademark rights for a total of $500 million."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer

Threads.com is a collaborative chat platform where people form groups, exchange content, and chat.

Threads.net is a social media network where people use hashtags, exchange content, and chat.

Do you really not see the similarity and how it could be an issue?

>Threads.net is a social media network where people use hashtags

A hash character I guess can be used but they don't do anything.

They will.

Like how URLs work in Instagram posts?

Helping people leave your App isn't the the top of most product manager's goals; even without the managment nightmare. Utilising inherent network effects to aid discovery within your app is the top of most product manager's goals.

Not allowing URLs is neglecting one of the fundamental pieces of the World Wide Web, no matter what product manager's goal is to line is swimming pool with gold.

>even without the managment nightmare

Works in Threads.

Works in Facebook.

Works in WhatsApp.

In fact, can you think of any other Meta property where links don't work, excluding Instagram?

I think the, "managment nightmare" is a boogeyman.

I've worked on projects where we had to rebrand entirely due to a USPTO search coming up with much less similarities with an existing name.

I guess it depends on how much risk you want to take.

Yeah definitely, in recent one the stakeholder very adverse to future risk.

What they're saying is, they don't see a legal issue. They do understand the names are the same, and are noting that commonplace words often have this issue.

More of an opportunity than an issue. Now they can sell the company to Meta for the domain name instead of simply folding when their Slack replacement fails.

Or change their name or pay for a license or…

Sure, those are both great outcomes for Threads.com. It's hard to see this being a problem rather than an opportunity for them. One wonders if they already do have such a name licensing agreement and just couldn't come to an agreement on buying the domain itself.

Maybe I’m wrong but I thought I heard Facebook Threads doesn’t support hashtags (one of those things that matters if they connect to the fedi because I just found out hashtags are the royal road to visibility there…)

John Gruber's coverage also says no hashtag support: https://daringfireball.net/2023/07/threads

Yeah, if anything Meta could countersue threads.com for infringing on their copyright. The original Threads app launched years ago.

I don't see how this is any different than a product named "Websites" or "Blogs" or "Comments". It's like a genericized trademark, except there was no trademark to begin with.

There should be no trademark protection for companies which use existing words as their name, especially if the word describes their business. "Slack" as a software name is borderline; "Slacks" as a name of a clothing company is crazy.

This is being heavily downvoted but it raises a very valid point. Again IANAL but in my vague recollection from dealing with this years ago, if "thread" is such a commonplace word in describing message boards, then it is not protected in the same way that, say, "Twitter" is. It would be like trying to argue only my bakery can use the word "cake"

Exactly how many companies called "Apple"do you know? And how many of them do business related to computers?

Am I the only one who gets an uncanny feeling visiting this site? If someone told me this was software satire I would believe them.

This cyberpunk-ish theme with juvenile sprite sprinkled over it (e.g. the little AI guy floating under the video and the figures under "What people are saying").

At the beginning of the video I get these '90s infomercial; "The world moves fast / information super highway" vibes. The background music seems ironic considering the visual content.

I guess it is just trying to be retro but the "I want to be post iOS 5 Apple" top bar throws me off. Sorry this is not constructive but I just must know if I'm the only one feeling this.

In any case, I don't mind Slack but I'd give this a try if they allowed more than 500 messages in the free tier. At least Slack gives you the 90 day history.

This looks more like a minecraft discord channel than an actual product.

I couldn't find a trademark with only the word "threads" [1]. There's "U Threads" [2] for example, but it has a disclaimer: "NO CLAIM IS MADE TO THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO USE "THREADS" APART FROM THE MARK AS SHOWN".

[1] https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/search

[2] https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4802:za...

IANYL.

Found it: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87522273&caseType=SERIAL_...

Funny enough that you are having this conversation. I was about to launch a NFT project called threads.nft which basically just had a bunch of pixel thread cartoons but no trademarked meta content. I was close to launch and then I stopped in my tracks realizing that Meta would probably kick in my door just for the overlap in name.

Nevermind how nonsensical this nft stuff seems to you, it isn't really relevant. I thought my anecdote might add to the discussion.

What do you think? Would I have lawyers at my door if I launched this (what can be best explained as) "art" project?

Jackpot. Sometimes the startup name makes all the difference

I don't know when they added it but Threads, Inc now has a prominent "We are not associated with Instagram" near the top of the page at Threads.com.

Facebook was willing to pay $9million for fb.com back in 2010. If this threads experiment goes well, I'm sure Zuck will make them an offer they can't refuse.

I don't understand this post.

What point is the headline making?

If I have gathered correctly, it's that Meta (Facebook's parent co) has launched a new product called "Threads", but there is already a company called "Threads" which OP linked with his or her post.

So the question is, how can Facebook launch without owning the trademark, which it is surely violating.

Meta launched a twitter clone called Threads. An existing chat application (in the Slack vein) is called Threads. Meta’s Threads might infringe on the other Threads’ trademark in the US.

They have successfully submarined us into looking at the product page on Threads.com as a Slack alternative, while opining on whether this might be a trademark dispute around Meta's new thing with the same name.

I suppose there is a lot of money waiting for you if you hide the free plan from your pricing page this month.

Not sure about the ethics of that, though.

> Please enter a work email address

Threads.com looks pretty great! It even has audio for channels, nice!

Tell HN:

This is the first thread about 'threads' I read today, and probably the only one pointing to a tool I find interesting.

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