Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by greenburger 4318 days ago
They could do a Louis Vuitton and make their trademark an integral part of the password design. Or pick a nice QR code and trademark that.
3 comments

I don't think you could trademark a QR code as it wouldn't be sufficiently distinctive.
morcheeba: looks like your account's been shadowbanned for some reason.
Possibly for good reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8170246

Best leave it to the mods.

This doesn't work... Nintendo tried it with the gameboy. The boot rom would extract the nintendo logo from the cartridge and display it on the screen. If it wasn't correct, the game wouldn't run. If it was correct, the theory was that trademark would prevent 3rd party games. But the judge ruled it was being used as a functional access control device and not as a trademark, so 3rd parties could include the nintendo logo in their games.

LV uses pure trademark law; it's not functional. That's why their protection stands.