Hive trademarking issue - an invitation to discussion
As a initial disclaimer: I do not specialise in intellectual property nor i trademark laws, thus this post may be incorrect or misleading in some points, but I find it important enough to share concerns that may threaten our hive project.
Social disclaimer
If I'm being the last person on Earth to get to know this, don't make fun of me, please.
I was browsing through articles about bitcoin and was pointed to the site https://bitcointreasuries.org
To my surprise I found a company listed there called Hive Blockchain
HIVE BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGIES LTD.
- Business Number (BN): 120804166
- Registry ID: BC0329058
- Registered Office Location: Vancouver, BC
- Status: Active
- Status Notes: Active
- Business Type: BC Company
- Created: 1987-06-24
Thankfully, I haven't found their registered trademark and their site saysHIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd. Copyright © 2017. All rights reserved
What's the issue?
I don't know this company or it's activity, but consider the following the following and IMHO likely scenario:
- The company finds out about the Hive (our and only legit Hive),
- Since it's registered in 1987 it can claim they were the first to use
HiveandBlockchaintogether and register a trademark in classes corresponding with the Hive's activity; I think the company changed its name in 2017, but it's still long before Hive emerging out of Steem, - Since there's no single entity they can litigate for damages they can use DMCA or similar equivalents to take down almost every Hive related page for copyright/trademark infringement.
It is a simplification, but we need to bear in mind that the bigger hive, the bigger and more sophisticated are threats against it. Intellectual property claims does not allow to claim the Hive blockchain ownership, but it can make our lives significantly difficult (f.i. listings on new centralised exchanges).
Is there a solution?
Since we don't want to have a single entity that would hold the rights to trademark. It's a path we have all been to and we don't want to repeat the same mistakes all over again. There's need to be a way to disarm patent-trolls and trademark hijackers.
What is a trademark?
More or less, it is s a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression which identifies products or services of a particular source from those of others.
It is used to and has to represent ability to distinguish one product from another or between similar products but made by different manufacturers.
Striping Hive Blockchain of its trademark ability
Easy to say... I gues we need to make sure Hive Blockchain is so widely used in relation to the Hive Blockchain that when a trademark and patent office employee googles it she/he will get tons of non-Hive-Blockchain-Technologies-Ltd answers.
In Poland I would file for a trademark registration but in the filling text I would vastly present arguments against it. The dismissal of the application would make it significantly harder for different applicant to get Hive Blockchainregistered.
As I stated at the beginning, I am not a IP-lawyer, so there may be another or better way, to do it. The situation is even more complicated because of diverse protection of intellectual property systems worldwide. However these systems, due to globalisation, tend to become more and more consistent with each others.
A call for the community
@apshamilton @theycallmedan @arcange @cardboar, @khaleelkazi, @fbslo, @dalz, @russia-btc, @trumpman, @jk6276, @claudio83, @lordbutterfly, @partitura, @themarkymark @abh12345 @acidyo
I think they already tried to take legal actions agains us back in March, but I haven't heard anything since then.
https://www.hiveblockchain.com/news/hive-blockchain-requests-cease-and-desist-from-new-steem-community-hard-fork-using-same-name/
I didn't know that. Thanks for the link
We got contacted by them after we forked from Steem. Not much came from it but I suggested we register the Trademark before they do.
This doesn’t guarantee you own it though as they can contest it and claim they have been using it before us (which they have).
At the time I was a big fan of using HONEY as the token instead of Hive. But there are also a lot of Honey references out there and we would still be the Hive blockchain.
I know rebranding is very common in Crypto Space.
For example LEND rebrand them as AAVE and there are many.
We can rebrand HIVE when we make new collaborations or major partnerships
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
We are called just 'Hive'.
We are not called 'The Hive Blockchain' or 'HIVE Blockchain'. Calling us that would be incorrect as this is not our name but various misrepresentations of our name. It is more proper to refer to us as 'the Hive ecosystem'. Where the term 'blockchain' is used in relation to us, it is as a descriptor for the type of technology that we use.
The same goes for this company which provides various mining tech. They are called 'HIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd'; this is their recorded name on their documentation and no one is contesting that, although some people used to troll them about it.
The word 'Hive' has been used for virtually everything since the invention of private enterprises and bee hives. There are a dozen 'Hive' businesses in any given town.
I don't agree with you on how we're called (by ourselves and others), I've encountered many cases where Hive blockchain has been used.
You're totally right about the company's name, but since they were earlier than us, they might try restricting the usage of 'Hive blockchain' as its referring to the HIVE is not as widespread.
There are numerous people who maliciously trolled them and then trolled us in the early days. That was the real issue and likely why they became involved in any way. People messaging random companies just to try to take down our Hive is something we'll end up dealing with. Another blockchain-related venture called Hive One got caught up in it too. There is always going to be more enemies of decentralization than friends. There will also always be a lot of different 'Hive's and especially since more and more businesses will move towards blockchain tech.
The best thing to do is to correct mistakes in references to ourselves. It's easy to mistype. We are a blockchain but we're not a company nor do we have any competing services. Their services are hardware and ours are an actual blockchain. Not even close.