FiftyThree Files Trademark For “Paper” | Hacker News Reader

FiftyThree Files Trademark For “Paper”

techcrunch.com

53 pointsaustenallred40 comments

Is this really the best usage of your funding cash? Seems like half of 53's $15M can go down the drain with this sort of thing. I sort of expect FB Paper to flop like the Facebook phone OS thing; if I were 53 I wouldn't be going so ballistic over this. Best case, they get the trademark and Facebook whittles down all of their funding in order for them to get it. Better for them to just move on and recognize that their product and Facebook's are different enough and it's not worth having the SEO from people searching the word "paper" to go into an expensive legal battle.

it costs about $1000-$2000

Yeah, filing a trademark doesn't cost that much in the grand scheme of things, especially when you've built up as much brand equity around the name as 53 has.

A lawsuit on the other hand would burn through cash, but IANAL so I don't know if the damages they could extract from Facebook would be worth it. Maybe being in a lawsuit against goliath would make the lawsuit pay for itself as free advertising, since I reckon journalists will enjoy writing about such a case.

If there goal is to make money and let's be honest, that is the goal of most start-ups, is this really a bad plan? It seems like it is a high risk/high reward proposition that most people on here love. Sure the odds Facebook's Paper being a success aren't sky high. Same with the chance of Facebook agreeing to a licensing agreement on the name. But when you compare the potential income from that to a fancy iPad app and stylus, it seems clear that litigation route might be the better use of VC funds.

And that is the problem with the current legal environment.

I don't think they expect Facebook to license the name; I think they don't want to dilute their name.

EDIT: Interestingly enough for me, I found it kind of repulsive that King.com trademarked "Candy" but I don't find this repulsive (I guess because either I am a hypocrite, or because "Paper" is their entire product name).

> I sort of expect FB Paper to flop

I hope not. It's much nicer than the official Facebook app. I think they ought to replace the official client with it.

It is prettier, but I didn't find a way to switch from 'Top Stories', to 'Most Recent'.

I hate 'Top Stories'. If I followed/friended you, I want to see what you have to say. If I think it's to much I'll suffer, or unfollow/unfriend. 'Most Recent' preserves order, and timing. Many of my friends post in such a way that timing, especially in relation to earlier posts, is important, 'Top Stories' doesn't preserve that.

As far as it's 'News' stuff, I still use rss. I already curate content I am interested in. I have spent a fair bit of time (across time, not all at once) curating my feeds. All of that to say, It didn't appeal to me.

At this point it's some nice PR. Until they start spending real money on legal, it's all smoke and mirrors.

Leaving aside the debate over trademarking common words, it's surprising FiftyThree hadn't already trademarked their product names. They charge a premium price for well-branded products - trademarking those names should have happened as a matter of course.

...just read TFA, looks like they did do some trademarkin:

> FiftyThree’s only trademark in the USPTO was for “Paper by FiftyThree”.

Why were people so up in arms over King's attempt to trademark "Candy", but suddenly it's OK to trademark "Paper"?!?

King used their trademarks to attack smaller players. FiftyThree is using theirs to defend against a larger player. Also, King has trademarked "Candy" across a lot of areas where they don't even have products. The application for "Paper" seems more specific.

FiftyThree also sort of did the same thing to a smaller player as well http://figure53.com/notes/2014-02-04-david-and-goliath/

There's a link on HN but it didn't do very well... odd.

Upvote it back on the mainpage... looks like a bad title buried it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7179241

I agree with you wholeheartedly. If you don't want someone else to use your product name, don't use one of the most common English nouns in the dictionary.

Put simply: people side with the little guy.

Oh.

See, yesterday I thought they were being quite civil and just getting some free publicity from the whole thing. But today...

There's no such thing as 'civil' when it comes to business, especially not when you're dealing with millions of dollars. When most business people (SV companies included) shake your hand they're holding a knife behind their back in the other.

1) Trademark rights are generally effective from date of use in commerce, not the date of filing.

2) Filing for registration isn't the same as filing an infringement claim.

3) The phrase "trademark for/on [some word]" is meaningless. Trademarks only exist for a word or name in the context of some class of product. "Lucky" brand jeans is a different mark than "Lucky" Strike bowling.

This whole thing is so stupid because it's pretty evident that Facebook is going to just turn the real app into Paper if the metrics look good, and the working name "Paper" is going to probably be abandoned. It seems they decided to launch the thing as a separate app to get feedback before completely overhauling the Facebook experience on iOS. Of course, Facebook can't admit to this, so FiftyThree is off in a corner freaking out.

Honestly, I think this was a defensive move in case FB decided to trademark 'Paper'.

They need to if they're going to be serious about keeping the name "Paper" with no mention of 53. To me it seems an absurd goal because it will be very expensive and has no substantive benefit for the product, But if having a single word generic mark on their application is desired they need to get out there and defend it. They will probably need to pursue "Papers By mekentosj.com" and other similarly named products to be successful.

That should go well. Just today I was taking notes on a product that clearly stole their brand: a piece of loose leaf notebook paper.

It's good that Facebook finally gets a taste of their own medicine (they've sued other sites for using Book in their name).

well come on. How much is Facebook worth vs. how much is "53 Paper" worth?

I know Facebook using the name without communicating first feels wrong, but this is just petty and won't succeed.

After reading this I kind of regret buying Paper's (FiftyThree) digital pencils/brushes/etc. A drawing app wanting to kill the use of that word in other industry verticals... i think "trademark troll" is now a real thing

So you should be able to start a computer manufacturer and call it Apple?

No. I should be able to start a magazine and call it Apple. Facebook isn't launching a drawing app nor FiftyThree a social network.

But both are competing in the the same place, the app store, over the same thing, your attention and money.

That's an absurd argument. You are saying Kayak.com is competing directly against kayak (boat) retailers on Google because they have the same name. I'm sorry but that "competing" argument is pure speculation, borderline bs.

Or, perhaps, they want to defend themselves in case Facebook makes a move against them regarding their brand name.

Come on, 53. That whole story is the best thing that can happen to you. Publicity.

A company who've raised $15m in funding isn't looking for the sort of publicity you get among people who talk about tech company Trademark cases most of whom knew about them anyway.

If the whole thing was mainstream maybe but this isn't really publicity for them, not in any meaningful sense.

I'd be interested to see how FiftyThree proves damages in this case, and whether or not the judge will make a call for the punitive damages.

I definitely think that there's no doubt about it: the FiftyThree Paper sales will certainly take a hit, and the brand is diluted hugely, especially for those who haven't encountered it yet.

This was obviously a conversation that Facebook had, and chose to do it anyway - not sure exactly what the result of the conversation was internally, but it almost certainly had to have some phrase like "well, if they sue us, we can handle it."

Any comment relating to "Oh, I first thought Facebook acquired Paper by FiftyThree" could be used as proof that it's causing brand/name dilution, etc..

If you don't want someone to eventually use the same name as you, you shouldn't use something so generic.

I'm sure they weren't the first, and won't be the last, person to use "paper".

why didn't they do this before? I guess they figure they can't get a trademark on a word like "Paper" and now they're just filing it to grab some headlines?

Good luck, seriously. There's 0 reason for facebook to care.

What losers

Reply on news.ycombinator.com