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Fine Brothers File For Trademark On Word "React"
DewDude writes: You've probably seen them on YouTube: Fine Brothers are the two behind the video series Teens React, Kids React, and Elders React. Well, the two seem to feel they somehow invented this whole thing and have now filed for a very broad trademark. The USPTO filing says the trademark will be published tomorrow and looking at the filing; it is literally for the word "react" and simply shows a screenshot of their YouTube page. They have also apparently gotten approval for "Parents React," "Celebrities React," and "Parents React"; as well as filed applications for things such as "Do They Know It," "Lyric Breakdown," "People v. Technology," and "Try Not To Smile Or Laugh."
Unfortunately after the recent REACT fiasco, that phrase has entered common usage and is no longer trademarkable.
Intellectual Property, translated from Latinate words to Anglo-Saxon ones, is Thought Ownership. Then the absurdity is clear.
Of all the I.P. laws --- patent, copyright, and trademark --- trademark to me made the most sense. I don't want another company calling itself Apple Computer. Trademark, then, is just like namespacing, just common sense.
But here I see that even that can be abused. It just goes to show that any law in the category of intellectual property should be sharply restricted, dealt with as if it had a big radioactivity symbol on it.
As for patents, they should just be completely obliterated. I have never seen a patent where I said, if we didn't grant this patent, we would never have got this thing invented. The inventor would have been too scared.
As for copyright, I can't yet say it should be obliterated. But the current terms are way too long. 30 years tops.
As for trademark, like I said, it just helps fight confusion, but still it should be dealt with with the utmost contempt for the requester. It would be better to hold off on granting one, and see what happens, than to grant too many. This is nothing but abuse by the Fine Brothers to unfairly stomp out competition.
Except that's how it's going to be applied. Use the word react in your youtube title, tags, or description and it'll be yanked! (or FineBros will take your ad money) I understand the business necessity to trademark your work(s), but in the context of youtube, it's merely a means to bully everyone. Even if that's not their intent, it's going to be very hard not to.
Ask Devinsupertramp how that works.
The problem is content producers on Youtube are actually losing money because their title has the word "REACT" in it and the contentID that automates detection of infringing videos are tagging these videos so the creators are losing their ad revenue and getting strikes against their account.
Another problem is that these guys have millions of subscribers so their a big revenue stream for Youtube so they have of course sided with the Fine Brothers.
The Fine Brothers didn't create this kind of content. They are nowhere near the first to use it but they are still basically taking ownership of other people's ideas.
I've subscribed to uploaders who've had these problems and Youtube is notoriously difficult to deal with because you have to prove you're not stealing, instead of the accuser having to make a proper case.
Just today I saw a video of a quad-copter being attacked by a hawk, and it was uploaded by the original owner but the video was flagged by some Korean news agency as theirs even though they had no relation to the video aside from using it in their broadcast. The big stinker is that the uploader was donating the ad revenue to a charity and so they've lost out on a couple grand already.
The system Youtube is using is very flawed but they don't seem to care about the grief and frustration they are causing users.
The most satisfying thing is a live stream of the Fine Bros current number of subscribers and the number just kept plummeting by 20-30 every few seconds.
Schadenfreude.