Hacker News Reader

Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

And this is exactly why companies protect their trademarks. A site called discord.io which offered services on top of Discord but wasn't affiliated with it in any way (but tricked users into believing so by using its logo and screenshots) should have been nipped in the bud a long time ago.

View on HN

Apparently, this sort of thing happened to Mr. Beast with regards to Mr. Beast Burger. Even though his agreements/contracts forbade the company making the virtual restaurant supplies from doing so, that company trademarked his likeness and brand in half a dozen foreign countries. He's currently suing them for damages, and for not paying him the agreed amount for his participation. (Apparently, they had paid him $0!)

Why are we acting like Mr Beast didn't also steal the moniker from Mr Beast (of Exit Through The Gift Shop notoriety)?

Are you thinking of Mr. Brainwash?

Yeah, they have to be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Brainwash

(Don't read if you don't want spoilers. Exit Through the Gift Shop is phenomenal and should be watched without knowing about this guy. Watch it, then read the Wikipedia article for yet another surprise.)

Who?

His name was generated by xbox for a gamertag

Did Mr Beast not realise that creating thousands of ghost restaurants would be a bad idea?

Is there anything particularly wrong with a delivery-only restaurant? That is the standard definition of “ghost restaurant” I know of.

quality control

should be no different than any other franchisee. If you are worried about them ruining your reputation then you should QC them with secret shoppers, inspectors, etc.

Not really anything super wrong with it, other than perhaps it would be harder to air grievances with them because there’s usually nowhere to go, and QC issues.

“Ghost Kitchens” have a more nefarious connotation than “delivery only” though because often it will be a single kitchen yet be advertised as many distinct restaurants. I saw one in one major city that was something like fifteen “different restaurants” operating from the same small space, which is sketchy.

But I think the person to whom you’re responding was relying more on the word “thousands” here. So given the connotation I think opening thousands of these things is pretty sketchy for some random YouTube personality with presumably no experience with restaurants to be opening simultaneously.

He created the idea at the beginning of the pandemic. His thought process was that the Mr Beast brand would allow smaller stores to carry his product and incentivise people to buy take out from those shops and help during lockdowns.

I don't believe the contract between him and VDC is out outlining the contractual obligations, SLAs, trademark and marketing issues etc.

There was an explicit agreement that VDC was not to trademark his brand/likeness. They just went and did it.

This is going to get harder unless the US government or US tech companies censor the Internet to block ones that don't follow US affiliated trademark law. Which I hope you wouldn't support.

That's not how it works. They just wouldn't be allowed to do business in the US, which seems reasonable.

See the sister comment about Mr. Beast.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com