Video Games

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Sony tried to trademark the term "Lets Play"

Last posted Feb 03, 2016 at 12:26AM EST. Added Jan 11, 2016 at 02:51AM EST
21 posts from 20 users

Now they were rejected by the US Patent Office, but the fact they tried to trademark "Lets Play," a phrase they didn't actually create, is quite odd. Like I can understand Nintendo trademarking "it's on like Donkey Kong" because that phrase involves a character/game franchise they own, but Sony's case is an odd one, since wasn't "Lets Play" first coined by Something Awful?

Plus I'm unsure if this means something like "does this mean Sony would try and restrict Lets Plays to only videos of their games or games on their consoles?" or what have you, because if that is what Sony was trying to do then that possibly would have made LPs difficult for everyone involved, including other gaming companies or small time developers that rely on LPs for marketing and word-of-mouth.

Last edited Jan 11, 2016 at 02:53AM EST

Oh look at that, more big businesses trying to abuse copyright law for profit at the expense of everyone. In other news grass is green.

hahahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

That has to be the stupidest stunt I've seen from a corporate company in a long time

What were they trying to accomplish? Were they trying to end LPs entirely? What made them think they could trademark a term they didn't even coin? Did they expect youtube to take down any video that had the term "Let's Play" in the title if the trademark was successful?

Ouch that's a ballsy move and it would of hurt (well inconvenience) a lot of people if they had there way. Sorta lowers my respect for Sony.

I don't know if I should be impressed at how confident Sony is right now, or disgusted at the fact they thought they could do it

This story gave me hope, that at least in some part of the United States bureaucracy hell of patent laws, someone had enough common sense to not let this thing slide.

Every time a video game company does something good, it then does something stupid like this.

In this case it's a 'Let's Pay'.

I would say "what were they thinking?" but that wouldn't be enough. No, I would say that someone, out there, thought it was a great idea and simply decided that it would be easy to go for it, like a walk in the park.