IMO this is less about IP laws and more about the incorrect incentive structure of frivolous litigation. The penalties incurred by Match for filing this lawsuit (assuming the court agrees with the interpretation in this post) should be not only that they have to cover the defendant's legal expenses, but they should have to pay 10x that in punitive damages on top of it.
In high school debate, people can initiate arguments about the "rules" of the debate and argue that their opponent broke them in some way (like not staying within the topic) and thus should lose.
A big problem cropped up where this style of argument was essentially a "no-risk" proposition - because the issue was orthogonal to the actual content of the debate, teams could without risk argue that their opponent had broken the rules - if they convinced the judge, they won the debate, if they failed to, the debate just continued as usual.
Eventually, to deter the ever-growing proliferation of these objections, people started arguing that anyone who initiates one of these "rule violation accusations" should lose the debate if they fail to prove their claim. I'm wondering if a similar penalty could become commonplace (perhaps by default/presumption) in US courts.
Ah, high school debate. Are they still doing they thing where they throw bad arguments at you and then if you just refuse to engage with the stupid ones or don’t talk as fast as them claim they “win” because you didn’t address their points?
Yes, the adage a "dropped argument is a true argument" remains true for many (but not all) forms of high school debate. That said, there is wiggle room in that an exceptionally stupid argument is not considered to need much response, but it should be touched on.
They do all of that, while speed reading their arguments at you!
Btw, for former debaters, OP of this thread is talking about topicality, theory/framework (which makes the gamework!), and reverse voting issues (RVIs)
There are a lot of legal problems like this. Like, all fines should be n*damage/probability_of_getting_caught where n is like a punishment coefficient. But law is weird. It tends to only be n*damages, and it’s hard to get everyone on board with the notion that justice should be asymmetrically applied based on things like company size or probability of getting caught.
Edit: I just learned you can use escape characters in HN text boxes
Yes, this exactly. Fundamentally in most legal situations, there is a huge asymetary between the litigants. Even in criminal cases you typically have a well funded, well schooled, prosecutor versus a law-ignorant and unfunded defendant.
Perhaps part of the role of the judge is to understand, and correct for, this imbalance - but I'm not sure how effective that is.
But back to the point, rules on legal costs, punitive fees and so on, all fall down when "the boot is on the other foot." There is no way for the small guy to take a big guy to court if legal costs are always paid by the loser, never mind punitive damages.
Equally while it's popular to default to evil-corp (with good reason) it's also important for big-Corp to have, and be able to defend, their intellectual property.
Writing rules that allow for fairness under all these conditions, inside a system that incentives combatents (lawyers) to maximise personal profitability, is, well, tricky.
> But back to the point, rules on legal costs, punitive fees and so on, all fall down when "the boot is on the other foot." There is no way for the small guy to take a big guy to court if legal costs are always paid by the loser, never mind punitive damages.
It's a good point, but I think you can solve that by just giving the judge discretion to scale the punishment appropriately.
> Equally while it's popular to default to evil-corp (with good reason) it's also important for big-Corp to have, and be able to defend, their intellectual property.
This is true as well, and I think if its a good faith disagreement on the law, the other side should pay the legal fees of the winner, but no more than that. But this case seems like bad faith, and I think we should be more aggressive about punishing that.
I agree with your points in concept, but I feel it falls down on implementation.
Relying on a judge to apply rules based on their whim seems prone to failure. Judges are people with all the baggage they bring. There's a reason patent owners like East Texas.
Good Faith is also a nebulous measure. On the face of it Match has a reasonable good-faith argument to complain about Muzmatch in the same space. They may win, they may lose, but either way both sides are spending million(s) on this. By your logic Muzmatch would stand to lose a few million if they lose the case. That may be existential for them, and vacation budget for Match. And we're back to asymetary.
Yet another case study that shows how IP[1] laws are used by incumbent players to stifle innovators. Even trademark laws, which in principle are the least onerous type of IP, lead to million dollar lawsuits in practice (and apparently that's in a less expensive jurisdiction). Also, this story seems to agree with other anecdotes I've heard about the dangers of rejecting acquisition offers from large competitors; there is a high risk of them cloning your product/strategy or using the legal system as a weapon (in this case, it appears both tactics were used).
This is a street with two ends, and it looks different depending on your point of view.
And yes all IP laws (copyright, trademarks etc) exist to both stifle and encourage innovation.
To be clear, _copying_is not innovation. And trademarks are the easiest to innovate in such that you don't infringe. For example Lindows was a clear case of "not innovating" and MS protected their trademark. Personally I don't believe you can trademark a common word (match) but when you enter a space its not terribly clever to use a compeditor name as part of your name.
Regarding acquisition, of course product cloning is an alternative. Little guys clone big guys, big guys clone little guys, everyone clones everyone all the time.
And yes the legal system can be used as a weapon, by big and small against big and small.
To this you can add theft of trade secrets disclosed while having talks and a bunch of other risks when in the process of acquisition. If you're going down this route specialist advice is recommended.
> For example Lindows was a clear case of "not innovating" and MS protected their trademark. Personally I don't believe you can trademark a common word
If you don't believe in trademarking a common word, the Windows trademark wouldn't be valid and Lindows would not be infringing.
I've always found the idea "ip laws encourage innovation" to be tenuous; if only because we have very few case studies of societies where ip laws aren't as strong as they are today (so, in scientific method terms, there is no control group). If anything, China may be one of these case studies, and while its certainly a highly debatable topic, I think its reasonable to say that they're doing alright (certainly not by western IP laws standards, but that's the point).
More broadly & theoretically: Nothing is necessary to encourage innovation. Innovation Happens; its a by-product of both human nature and capitalistic economic systems. Creativity-based IP (ex: developing a cool new video game character) is most often a by-product of necessity in human nature to express ones inner creativity. Technology-based IP (ex: developing a new drug) is most often a by-product of necessity in market-based economic systems; if enough people exist to buy it, it will be developed.
Secrecy, as it exists today within a non-legal context, would still exist without any IP protection, and is generally adequate to reach first-to-market. In addition to domain expertise, of course.
Caveat: there's a delineation between, for lack of a better term, "product-based distribution rights" versus much more ephemeral intellectual property. For example, Disney produces Iron Man the movie, versus Iron Man the character. One is a product; the other is pure intellectual property. Or: Remdesivir the pill, versus the Remdesivir formulation and chemical structure. It makes far more sense to me that Iron Man the movie should still have access to strong legal protection, in the form of stopping unwanted distribution; but that is separate from controlling access to Iron Man the character.
Caveat: ip laws are oftentimes leveraged in a consumer protection angle (especially trademarks). Again, this feels like a situation where we started with ip laws, then said "oh thank goodness we can use these laws to protect consumers", rather than starting with the generally laudable goal of protecting consumers then working backward to arrive at laws which can do that. In other words, the argument is always "you're using the word 'match' in your company name, you're deceiving consumers" and not "you're deceiving consumers, and here's a list of reasons why, one of which is the usage of 'match' in your name". Copying a name is evidence of an offense; not an offense itself.
The issue is: Copying can be innovative. Everyone stands on the shoulders of giants, and innovation comes in many forms. There is innovation in the original creation; but original creation is not alone an application of intellectual property to benefit humanity in an equitable & accessible way. Quite literally, its the same argument as the old "ideas are a dime a dozen; its the execution that matters"; because it really is. Inventing a life-saving drug should not be rewarded; being able to produce it at massive scale, for an affordable price, should be rewarded. And free market economic systems (with FDA-like quality control, of course) do that really well.
Ideally, the same company can do both; and stepping back ip laws would actually add pressure to accomplish just that.
Final argument against: Some intellectual creations are just really expensive to produce, and may never be produced if an ROI can't be guaranteed with ip laws. There are two issues with this argument:
First: What if it isn't actually legitimately expensive to produce? IP laws are baked in to everything at this point; companies know they can charge whatever they want for some product, because they have intellectual property protection; and that means they can inflate their inefficiencies in producing it. Its similar reasoning to student loan bankruptcy protection being a reason why higher education has gotten so expensive in the US; why not be inefficient? Removing ip protection could actually increase efficiency by forcing companies to optimize research & delivery (or more accurately; inefficient companies who can no longer hide behind the shield of ip protection will be replaced by more efficient organizations who can produce the same thing cheaper).
Second: Ok; Something is legitimately insanely expensive to produce. The only great example anyone ever provides in this category is drugs. And its a good example; novel drugs can be really expensive to produce, test, etc. So, the company wants an ROI; and that means philosophically holding a gun to a patient's head and saying "you're gonna die without this, now buy it". This is not ok; and it should be somewhere that public funding steps in.
The point of this rant is not to assert change that any western country needs to implement; because we never will. More-so just an intellectual argument.
>I've always found the idea "ip laws encourage innovation" to be tenuous; if only because we have very few case studies of societies where ip laws aren't as strong as they are today (so, in scientific method terms, there is no control group). If anything, China may be one of these case studies, and while its certainly a highly debatable topic, I think its reasonable to say that they're doing alright (certainly not by western IP laws standards, but that's the point).
Actually we have a pretty good case study. Patent laws for pharmaceuticals. Before much of the world-wide "harmonisation" of patent law, different countries allowed for very different patentability of pharmaceutical "recipes". In all of Europe and Switzerland up to the 1930s (or possibly even later) therapeutical agents were excluded from patenting (although companies tried to get around this in various ways), in the US on the other hand no such provision existed. However, the vast majority of innovation/inventions came from Europe, also the investment in R&D was much higher in Europe than in the US.
All this to support your assertion that the idea that "ip laws encourage innovation" is tenuous.
While we don't have great controlled experiments, we do have some historical data to view. Here are some of my suggestions;
The Soviet Union had no way for individuals to benefit from innovation. So in most spheres they lagged the West in technological advancement. One area which did have rewards (in standard of living), rocketry, they were ahead.
During WW2 many private companies developed weapons etc for private gain. Especially in the air. While there were talented designers in the USSR, again, overall they lagged behind. I'm not saying none - there were other rewards in play - but as a proportion of population, progress overall seems slow.
If I had to hypothesise I'd say than IP laws encourage innovation via competition, whereas non-IP areas focus on innovation through cooperation - for societal not individual benefit.
"incumbent players" typically the person who uses something that can be trademarked first, wins. Match has been around forever. I don't see how this other company got a trademark. And yes it is confusing.
As far as being cloned, yeah I'm not surprised. If they can't aquire you, they will try to clone you. That is how competition works. IP laws help prevent that.
This is a monopoly (Match own 40+ other companies) every way you look at it and muzmatch have my support.
This all seems like a classic jealous bigger guy that couldn't get it's way and is throwing its toys out the pram.
I hope this backfires and Match get stung in all this. If anyone from Match is reading, your conglomerate won't do this app or its complicated community any justice anywhere near as the founder would.
These companies aim to dominate markets not by "best product wins" but by "only product wins". So much of the tech markets are winner take most (or all) and if the tech giants can't beat the startups, they try to acquire them (and then often bury them). If they can't acquire them, they try to bury by other means.
This is all fueled by investor money and public market money. Throw tons of money at something and you'll dominate the market, whether or not the product is any good. This is the heart of so many problems in the tech industry and part of why I think we need alternatives to current funding models for tech.
sounds like the eyeglasses and sunglasses brands (and retail stores) that people might mistakenly be under the impression are independent companies, but are all part of Luxottica.
> LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, Apex by Sunglass Hut, Pearle Vision, Target Optical, Eyemed vision care plan, and Glasses.com. Its best known brands are Costa, Ray-Ban, Persol, Oliver Peoples and Oakley.
Luxottica basically arm wrestles firms into being bought or else... else normally being they stop distributing them in the chains they control, which gives them a hard discount in company takeovers.
Today some Chinese brands match Luxottica in quality, and if you do some homework you'll find almost every independent brand is much cheaper and high quality (Bollé is my go to for safety/sports glasses, for example).
Andrey Andreev sold out to Blackstone, a private equity firm [1]. The parent company of those dating apps you listed is now publicly-traded [2], but still majorly owned by Blackstone.
Still doesn’t change your point that there are two major monopolies in the online dating sector.
It’s really strange to me that regulators let it happen. The UK just ruled that Facebook must divest from Giphy of all things but somehow a single company can own the majority of the online match making market.
I don’t what percentage of coupling and relationships are dependent today on Match.com et al but I bet it’s substantial at least in the major western markets.
The sheer amount of potential social engineering one achieve by cornering the market is pretty frightening.
It’s the same issue I have with the likes of Facebook and Google they really can control the lives of people far beyond what most can even imagine.
For most of us life isn’t some great plan, it’s all a series of small inconsequential events that roll into big life changing ones.
Some of your biggest moments in life can be “traced back” to a single inconsequential random moment and companies like Google and Facebook control a lot of these moments today.
It's very unfortunate but the reality is these kind of things happen often. I don't think match group is high on ethics, nor would I expect any
$30bn+ group to be. The top layer in an organization like that thinks only in finance and legal.
Hopefully the courts in the UK side with you (they are quite fair) and that you can get back to business.
I found an article on the Mirror from 2015 (picture below). Their muzmatch logo and heart seem to have a similar font and heart placement when comparing to what Google gives for the current match logo. In present day, muzmatch seems to use a different font and a butterfly.
I'm not a trademark lawyer so I have no legal argument to make, but I dont think match is insane for wanting to have a court of law decide if this company has stolen their trademark.
According to "Logopedia", Match only started using that logo since 2015,[1] which does seem to be supported by their own press releases from 2014 using a different logo.[2] A news article[3] from 2011[4] shows that muzmatch had already been using the logo at the time.
So the stealing might have happened the other way.
Sonos sues for infringing on their patent for controlling the volume of multiple speakers at the same time, Match group sues for infringing on their patent for swiping left/right... I'm starting to notice a pattern here.
I understand why the patent system exists and its pitfalls aren't easy to solve but god does it suck so much when it gets abused by corporations.
I can totally see the brand harm here. There’s nothing Muzmatch can do to make users not associate them with Match.com, even if they truly want to. It’s what I thought at first.
I don’t blame Match for any of this, as much as I want to root for a startup.
You need to establish that the use case of ‘the’ has a legitimate brand reconcognition that entitles it to protections. But yeah, if you make a million user social network company called The, you would get to have ‘The’ protected from competitors using it as their own brand. It’s dumb, but it’s the way it works, and YC is not ignorant of it.
“The match game” existed long before match.com. They did not originate “match” being associated with dating, the concept and terminology predated them by decades.
I am sure that a sufficiently motivated researcher could find paid service date match making companies with something "match" in the name going back to the 1970s, when it was all done manually and by telephone, or the 80s and by fax.
That just doesn’t matter, legally. There were presumably people named Wendy for a long time but I can’t start a burger joint named Wendy’s, even if my name was Wendy.
If Match.com established the brand other people can’t. I didn’t make the law but people are downvoting me like I did, I just pointed out (and IANAL so maybe I’m wrong) that this seems like clear brand harm.
But they did officially brand it—-it’s not just the idea of matching. One way in which this does have some real use is in protecting users. Maybe Match has some set of privacy values that people have come to trust, and by letting other companies who don’t share the same values co-opt the brand recognition, it can cause issues for users who thought they were protected by Match’s privacy policies.
Can't blame them that they seize the opportunity that the system grants them.
It's however bizzare that the system would grant them a monopoly on something they didn't invent. They merely took it from the community of English speakers and branded it as their own.
Similar to claiming a patent on an invention that you didn't invent. Just took already existing public domain technology that nobody else would dare to claim rights on and slapped a monopoly stamp on it.
Common words just shouldn’t be allowed as a trademark in the first place. Imagine if we allowed an automaker to trademark the word “truck”. It would be lunacy, just as much as allowing one company to “own” the word match. It’s not even a little bit unique or original.
In any case this is very much the big guy vs the small. The accusation attempt speaks for all of this. They couldn't buy them. I can hear the rattled and frustrated CEOs confusion when they were turned down.
I'm rooting for the smaller guy, and what's way to destroy your companies image.
This isn’t new. It’s generally applied to specific uses, and match in the dating world has legitimate brand recognition to be protected. I think the whole thing is BS, but it’s not a secret, and musmatch/YC should be no more surprised by it than someone starting a fast food joint called McChipotle.
Your analogy doesn't really carry over. If McDonalds or Chipotle were called "Food" then imo it would be a dick move to sue a smaller restaurant chain named GregFood. (As to whether they would prevail, I have no idea.)
We have been for a long time. Try opening a restaurant called "The Mouse" and you'll probably be fine. Try starting a TV channel with the same name, and I guarantee you'll be sued the same day it's announced.
I feel the distinction is that match is common term for the industry in which the trademark applies. Whereas Apple is not a common word in software except to mean that particular company.
I dont think I can call my company "Software" and then sue anyone that uses the word software in the software industry. I feel "match" is similar to trademark of the word Dating. I am sure a trademark attorney can enlighten us. I am guessing.
Obviously the trademark was granted in multiple jurisdictions for match so its not a problem apparently. I wonder what the rationale is.
In fact, it would be a lot like Microsoft deciding to sue Ingram Micro for having Micro in the name, and being in the IT business, despite that being a common term at the time of founding (microcomputers being what they're deriving from).
Or Microsoft suing NCSoft for being a software company.
Apple doesn't sell apples or any other kind of fruit. That's my guess as to why Apple is an acceptable trademark for phones, computers, music (per arrangement with Apple Records), etc, but Snapchat's Spectacles trademark was rejected. The term for this is "arbitrary mark".
note that apple did get sued by apple corps (the beatles music) when they began introducing music features to their computers with the IIgs and similar.
