Amazon, Kindle U longread

hello,

The Verge published a longread titled 'Bad Romance' about Amazon, Kindle Unlimited, the algorithm, cockygate, book stuffing and all that other good stuff going on at the Amazon store.

Fodder for mind-boggling thought. Thanks for pointing to it.

I've never figured out how a trademark for the word "cocky" was given out to begin with. The dictionary places origin of the word back to 1768. I see no reason why it's not in the public domain.

And the latest I can find, from last month, is that a judge has struck it down.

https://www.geekfence.com/2018/06/18/the-long-cocky-gate-nightmare-is-over/

Other discussions provided in the article are interesting. Some of what is going on I've never heard of before. I don't envy Amazon and other online distributors trying to work with all the self-publishers can try to do.

KeithD said:

Fodder for mind-boggling thought. Thanks for pointing to it.

I've never figured out how a trademark for the word "cocky" was given out to begin with. The dictionary places origin of the word back to 1768. I see no reason why it's not in the public domain.

Click to expand...

That in itself doesn't preclude a trademark. "Apple" has been in the language for more than a thousand years, but Apple Records and Apple Computer both have trademarks involving that word.

Trademarking is very much about context and branding. If I open an unlicensed "Apple Computing" store, I can expect to be sued out of existence because I'm leeching off somebody else's reputation. But if I open "Apple Hamburgers", there's no conflict - nobody is likely to mistake me for the record company or the computer company, so I'm not hurting them or piggybacking on their brand. I can probably trademark that, unless somebody else got there first.

On the other hand, if I try to trademark "Apple Pies" as a food brand, that's probably not going to hold up in court because it's not distinctive enough and there are thousands of people out there already selling "apple pies", even if they haven't trademarked it.

By my understanding, that's roughly what happened to Faleena Hopkins: the judge recognised that "cocky" in the context of a romance novel wasn't distinctive enough to be protected as her unique brand, especially since other authors had already been using it.

As to why she was able to register it in the first place... my non-professional understanding is that IP registration (patent, trademark, and copyright) doesn't apply rigorous checking unless and until somebody contests it in court.

It makes sense from an economic perspective - the fee to register a trademark is a couple of hundred dollars, but it would cost thousands to get an IP lawyer to rigorously vet something like this, and unless somebody objects to the trademark there's no point in spending that money.

By the same token, I imagine the Copyright Office would happily take my $35 to "register" a work that was simply a copy-and-paste of the King James Bible, but if I tried to enforce that I'd be laughed out of court.

Other discussions provided in the article are interesting. Some of what is going on I've never heard of before. I don't envy Amazon and other online distributors trying to work with all the self-publishers can try to do.

Click to expand...

Ayup. That sort of business is why I cringe at the occasional well-meaning suggestions here about how we could let Literotica authors monetise their stories through this site. As soon as there's a buck to be made, people will try to break the system.

Bramblethorn said:

That in itself doesn't preclude a trademark. "Apple" has been in the language for more than a thousand years, but Apple Records and Apple Computer both have trademarks involving that word.

Click to expand...

Apple has lots of money already having passed hands involved. A dirty book self-publisher, not so much.

Bramblethorn said:

That in itself doesn't preclude a trademark. "Apple" has been in the language for more than a thousand years, but Apple Records and Apple Computer both have trademarks involving that word.

Click to expand...

And there was a legal dust-up between the two when Apple Computer started gearing up its iTunes Store.

BTW, Amazon offer three months of Kindle Unlimited for a dollar earlier this week.

And God help me, I spent that dollar.