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Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

Facebook is not bribing anyone. Facebook is not trademark squatting.

Words matter. Inflammatory nonsense has no place on HN.

They're paying money to a trusted authority for preferential treatment on a literal registered trademark, in such a way to try and poach customers.

It's legal, but I don't understand why. The broader discussion point is why we do this to ourselves.

"Under U.S. law, use of a competitor's trademark in accurate and non-deceptive comparative advertising is legal and does not constitute trademark infringement" [1]

Which shows that it is a fairly grey area. "Fair use" doctrines apply to trademark infringement and using your competitor's name in this way has in the past been allowed.

[1] https://corporate.findlaw.com/intellectual-property/ours-wor...

> Facebook is not trademark squatting.

Signal is a registered Trademark. They are buying ads for the word Signal. How is that not Trademark squatting?

> Facebook is not bribing anyone.

I think OPs point is that it should be considered bribery to pay Google to show up at the top of the search results. I think they chose their words very intentionally.

Trademark squatting and bribery have specific, legal definitions and in many countries are illegal.

It does not mean bidding on your competitor's keywords or paying to use Google's advertising platform.

You do understand that what you are saying is libellous right ?

I read it in the context of "some day". They may be expressing optimism that the legal definitions could be corrected to match what they (and I) consider to be the commonly used meanings of these words.

> Trademark squatting is when one party intentionally files a trademark application for a second party's registered trademark in a country where the second party does not currently hold a trademark registration.

https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/newsletter/inve...

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