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I don't get it. Forum "threads" are a well-established, common word. How can you just trademark a core domain word like that?

It's like if a bank named itself (and trademarked) "Bank", or like if YouTube renamed to (and trademarked) "Videos".

The law shouldn't allow companies to buy rights to already-in-use words. Besides, why would you want to? Isn't it better to have a unique, memorable name?

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I'm going to start a new payment service called "Transfer" everyone else is now infringing.

Have it named Xfer and then sell it for 2 billion to Musk when he wants to add financial transactions to his Everything App.

paypal used to be x.com

Sounds plausible.

It's not about buying rights.

You're a company. You call yourself "Threads" (and are the the first to do so). Then you should be able to conduct business under the assumption that your name can't be hijacked, or smeared. Sounds like a basic form of protection to me. It gets abused, probably, like everything, but that's not a reason to stop it.

If not, what's to stop anyone from calling themselves Amazon, Apple, Facebook, etc.? I'm sure there are a few vendors who would love the opportunity.

> what's to stop anyone from calling themselves Amazon, Apple, Facebook, etc

Nothing, but wealth

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