Comment on Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk would like to ‘delete all IP law’ | TechCrunch
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 5 days agoI would still keep patents at about 20 years. There’s some nuance that needs to change to prevent, say, Nintendo from retroactively patenting Pokemon after Palworld comes out, but yeah patent law needs a colonic.
I’d be okay with 20 or even 30 year copyright terms on complete works, but I would be more open on derivative works and fair use.
I want stricter trademark law. Trademark should be about knowing where your products come from. A manufacturer gets right of way over a mark so that they can defend their own reputation, and I’ll help them defend that mark because I want to know where the goods I buy come from.
It should not be legal to buy a commodity item and slap your brand on it. I see this a lot in the tool market. There seems to be two 6" jointers in production in the world today, the one JET makes, and the one everyone else sells. Wen, Craftsman and Porter Cable among many others sell the same 6" jointer. Speaking of Craftsman, that brand is now owned by Stanley Black & Decker, who also owns Porter Cable, DeWalt, and several others. Most of what they use this for is to sell mutually incompatible yet functionally similar power tools so you have to buy more batteries. They might design or build some of their tools in-house, but many of them they buy from some other company and just put their stickers on. Is it, or is it not, a “Craftsman”?
Then you’ve got Amazon, Temu, AliExpress and other Chinese dropshipping platforms. They make a whole bunch of shit and then register nineteen or twenty bullshit trademarks to sell the same thing under. I would make that illegal; if you have a brand that is suitable for selling a given item, you’re not allowed another for that purpose. Trademarks are supposed to reduce consumer confusion, you’re using them to increase consumer confusion. If I am elected dictator, that kind of behavior will earn you a public trepanning.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
I disagree. However, I do think you should be obligated to disclose the source of that commodity so customers can use reviews of similar products to get an idea of the quality of yours. You’re still on the hook for warranties and whatnot, but you should need to disclose what you did and didn’t design/build.
This goes doubly for where something was made. You can’t just slap a “Made in USA” sticker on something that’s made elsewhere, you need to disclose where things come from. Such as, “Designed in USA, parts made in Vietnam, assembled in Mexico” or whatever.
Would this apply to product segmentation? For example, Toyota owns the Lexus brand, and they segment their products under those different brands. They reuse a ton of parts though, so your Toyota is much more similar to a Lexus than it is to other economy vehicles in its market segment.
Walking that line is quite difficult, and I think it largely misses the point. I’m not confused when I buy a ATHEOTS or whatever BS brand they come up, I know I’m buying cheap knock-off stuff. The problem here is how quickly those brands pop up and disappear, and that should be illegal IMO (you can’t just rebrand when your company gets a bad reputation). But maybe that was your point, I’m just saying it’s less a trademark issue and more company restructuring shenanigans.
To tackle this problem, I’m happy to remove limited liability protections once a company gets above a certain size. But that’s a bit outside the scope of the IP law discussion.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
| but you should need to disclose what you did and didn’t design/build.
A specific example I have in mind: James Wright of youtube channel Wood By Wright did a video comparing like 24 hand planes, from a bunch of different brands and sources from Ace Hardware to fucking AmazonBasics. He noticed that there were basically 3 manufacturers; Jorgensen seems to offer a unique product, and then everyone else were offering slight variations on the same two designs. So there’s a manufacturer somewhere in China that churns these out, and will stamp your brand on them plus you have the option of plastic handles, aluminum or brass thrust wheel, etc. to fine tune the price point you want to hit.
That’s what I want to kill. In this case, if it’s made by Happy Clappy Fun Time Shenzhen Co. Ltd. it needs to be branded as such. Jury’s still out if I’ll allow things like the iPhone that are “Designed in Cupertino California, Made In China.” A product that is designed by a company for that company but then they contract out the manufacture.
Product segmentation? I’m fine getting rid of a lot if not all of that. All cars are luxury cars now. And what good does it do us allowing SB&D to have DeWalt and Craftsman? “We have two brands (actually four, with Porter Cable and Black & Decker) of cordless tools with very similar yet mutually incompatible battery standards and not quite equivalent product lineups, for no reason that benefits the customer.” Perfect, yeah, get on the hobbling wheel, you can explain why we should let you keep doing this between screams.
| I’m not confused when I buy a ATHEOTS or whatever BS brand they come up, I know I’m buying cheap knock-off stuff.
There’s one of two possibilities here:
Happy Clappy Fun Time Shenzhen Co. Ltd. is doing it themselves, registering trademarks, selling goods with that brand just long enough for the public to catch on, and then dropping that brand and coming out with another. This should be illegal and impossible. Like the mechanism by which the trademark system works should not be able to function this way.
Some Fuck In His Apartment is ordering out of Happy Clappy’s Shit We’ll Rebrand For You catalog. So Reginald Q. Flybynight registers APOWEDG and sells mousepads and shit for a few weeks on Amazon. This…doesn’t need to be a business model me allow. If Happy Clappy wants their shit sold on Amazon, they can list it there themselves. We don’t need the illusion of competition or market choice, we don’t need prices elevated by Some Fuck Who’s Also There…Trademark law is there to guarantee the source of goods. Reginald Q. Flybynight isn’t the source of the goods so he has no need or right to brand the goods. All that does is obfuscate who to sue if the goods are faulty or dangerous.
I’m sick of living in a world of “Someone somewhere made this I think.”
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
How do you feel about things like t-shirts where the design is made by the seller, but the shirt itself is produced elsewhere. It follows the same model, but generally they’re used as merch by a variety of different groups, from music artists to influencers to charity groups.
Are you expecting something like, “Designed by Local Company in Local City, manufactured by Happy Clappy Fun Time in Shenzen”?
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
Honestly that particular business model already pretty much works the way I’d want it to.
The T-shirts are made in tremendous quantities by the likes of Hanes or Gildan with a tag in the collar that shows the company name/logo and country of origin. Quite often the artist or IP owner of the printed art will include a trademark or copyright symbol as appropriate into the artwork. The printing company often goes uncredited.