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Court Finds "Pinning" On the Internet To Be Fair Use (docketalarm.com)

Posted by timothy on from the such-language dept.

speedplane writes: Pinterest has always aggressively defended their trademarks, but in 2013, they launched a trademark lawsuit against Pintrips, a travel planning startup that allows users to "pin" and share information about flights. Yesterday, however, a federal court issued a major ruling against Pinterest finding that "pinning" is a feature, not a trademark, and therefore is fair use. This seems to bode well for the many other "pinning" sites on the internet.

5 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. Pin??? by mwvdlee · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How is "pinning" any different from any other type of hyperlink?

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    1. Re: Pin??? by jonbryce · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It is a trademark case, not a patent case. They wouldn't have complained if they had used another word to describe it. By the way, fair use relates to copyright, so the court almost certainly didn't rule it was fair use, they probably ruled that "pinning" is a generic word.

    2. Re:Pin??? by gmack · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Too bad for them. I've been "pinning" locations on maps since I was a child in the 80s.

  2. Complaining about "Pin" was a stupid thing to do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Setting aside whether trademarks actually advance anything but the lawyers' wallets, Pinterest should have simply focused on "Pintrips", and complained about the similar name of the site, instead. That probably would have got them somewhere.

  3. Re:Seems like the right call by Dragonslicer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You should probably spend a little time reading and understanding the law (or possibly English) before spouting random words. Patents are not mentioned anywhere in the summary.