[putlake]

The way trademarks work is that if you don't actively defend them you weaken your rights. So Anthropic needs to defend their ownership of "Claude". I'm guessing they reached out to Peter Steinberger and asked nicely that he rename Clawdbot.

[mattmaroon]

Last year in my area, a food truck decided to call itself Leggo My Egg Roll, and obvious play on Eggo waffles tagline.

Kellogg sent them a cease and desist, they decided to ignore it. Kellogg then offered to pay them to rebrand, they still wouldn’t.

They then sued for $15 million.

[jakereps]

My old local brewery had a Leggo My Ego[1] beer they also were served a cease and desist by Kellogg over... they still make it, it's just now called the Unlawful Waffle[2] which is a bit funnier if you happen to know the lore/reason.

1. https://untappd.com/b/arizona-wilderness-brewing-co-leggo-my...

2. https://untappd.com/b/arizona-wilderness-brewing-co-unlawful...

[stogot]

Funny story but the taste scores don’t look to great. Do you like it?

[jakereps]

It’s one of those types you have to be the person that likes that style. It’s my friends favorite rotator but I think it’s a decent try-it-once beer, that is only around for a little while at a time.

The brewery itself though is one of my favorites to this day with, in my opinion, the best food I've ever encountered at something that identifies itself first as a "brewery." I don't visit the area without making a stop there.

[worik]

> It’s one of those types you have to be the person that likes that style

Yes.

I live in a community that has a very high population of home brewers (beer and spirits mostly). Many of them are needy and use strict techniques (their breweries remind me of the Winnebago meth lab in Breaking Bad) making very good beer and gin.

When we have our local competition of brewers the winner is always some thing like "Belgian Sour". To me a beer that is foul. But to the experienced brewers it is the best.

"Likes that style" covers a huge range with beer.

[esafak]

Funny. I was expecting LEGO not Kellogg.

[clarkmoody]

...and then what happened?

[razingeden]

it’s in the discovery process with a deadline of February 23rd, at which time kellogg’s is to prepare their argument and motion for summary judgement. If that’s denied it tentatively goes to 3-4 day trial in July.

Court listener:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/70447787/kellogg-north-...

Pacer (requires account, but most recent doc summarized )

https://ecf.ohnd.uscourts.gov/doc1/141014086025?caseid=31782...

[mattmaroon]

I never saw them again (and I host large food truck festivals here) so I just assumed they threw in the towel. I did not know they are still operating but apparently so.

I have to imagine they’ll spend more time and money fighting this suit than they did starting the food truck. I see no reason you wouldn’t just rebrand. The name is mid at best anyway.

But also, I’m kinda rooting for them. From a distance though.

[Barbing]

Good question

https://local12.com/news/nation-world/kellogg-leggo-my-eggro...

[z2]

Could they have gotten around this by actually serving Eggo waffles? Would that have then fallen under nominative fair use?

[mattmaroon]

I doubt it, no. I couldn’t go buy Taco Bell sauce at the store, serve it at my restaurant, and call my restaurant Taco Bell.

They could probably mention it on their menu.

[fc417fc802]

I'm guessing (NAL) that would actually make it worse. Trademark violation revolves around brand confusion. If you actually serve their product you are making that _much_ more likely (in my uninformed opinion anyway).

Otherwise it's a standalone argument about a stupid pun applied to food in general.

[OrangeMusic]

Honestly the decision to name it Clawd was so obviously spectacularly stupid and immature that it makes me wonder about the whole project? I won't try it.

[kaycey2022]

Of course Anthropic has the most obnoxious legal team of all the ai companies. The project got traction under the older name. A name change does hurt the project.

[theshrike79]

It's not about obnoxiousness or morality.

They HAVE to defend their trademark or they'll lose it by default.

The law pretty much goes "if you don't care about it, you don't need it anymore".

[bluedel]

I don't think it's obnoxious to protect your trademark against a literal homophone operating in the same space as you. I'm confident a lot of people heard about "clawdbot" and assumed it was an anthropic product.