Wait, so something like that has already been done before? I kind of feel bad for the guy who did that before, they probably chose that because they thought Lets Play couldn't be used but they would have stuck gold though. Its all good though.

WHELP....That's good, at least. I was a little worried about all this. Although I'll never understand how you can even attempt to buy a pre-existing concept. Especially one that you yourself had no part in making.

Eirinn : That seems kind of too coincidental, in my opinion, but at least what we thought was happening isn't going to. I was really shocked that it was Sony who would try to trademark; even Nintendo didn't do anything that bad (and they did it because they're just close-minded as a company in many aspects, unfortunately), and my money would be on Microsoft being the first to do something like that. As a gaming company, they've done some questionable stuff overall, from the opinion of someone outside looking in.

zanderlex : This allows them to limit who and when people can say the term. Basically requiring people to pay them to use the word. At the very least, the control is in their hands if they got the trademark.


Similar to the guy that trademarked "Let's Get Ready to Rumble" You ever hear anyone say that aside from him anymore?? Now you know why.

History shows that many people have tried to do something similar. Kinda like the person that wanted to Trademark the Happy Birthday song.

Jordanv78 : Well mainly the reason why Sony did it was because they didn't want their competitors like Microsoft or Nintendo to trademark the term Let's Play and they were even almost concerting Pewdiepie as a competitor.

goku123 : Oh I understand why they did it. Similar to my last post. They want to be able to control how people use a really popular term on the internet. Which is fairly common for corporations and people to do this, you just normally don't hear about it on the news.

I knew they wouldn't be able to actually go through with it.It's just too broad a term.I'm surprised they thought they could secure it in the first place.

Sony has lost their damn minds. I guess they did not see when Trump tried to trademark "You're Fired!" He failed too.

Hey Sony,how about fixing your REAL problems,like your network security?

I this is completely stupid, why in the world would Sony copyright "Let's Play" to them. Although I haven't played a lot of PlayStation games unlike I have in the past, but now I know why.

Note, there is a lot of Xbox gamers and Nintendo gamers out there and they both do Let's Play videos as well, plus there is more Nintendo Let's Play videos than Sony and Microsoft (excluding PCs) combined, and Sony copyrighting "Let's Play" would kill their advertisements and you can bet that they will be lawsuits all over the place.

This is a stupid move that Sony would do, it would do more harm than good. Let's Play is shared through all video game systems.


Oldschool777 : I agree, Sony needs to fix up their fragile security system that way it doesn't get hacked like every year.


This is like how the mobile game company King tried to copyright the word "candy" even know the word candy has been around for thousands of years.

Gotta admit,Sony has b@lls,but no brains,lol. I mean,Sony,fix your security,make the PS4 backward compatible and you will kick the living snot out of Microsoft. King,don't they basically release the same game,just with a new paint job? How about design something that is NOT Candy Crush?

But on a serious note. We are all gamers,regardless of system or platform,let us game together and enjoy the games.

Yea sure that's gonna work out well for Sony. Didn't nick try that years ago when they were trying to get kids active?

Sony recently said they denied the claim that they were trying to trademark the term Let's Play. Just thought I'd post this here as sort of an update for you all.

If it were to happen, I would not be surprised. In Quebec Coca-Cola tried (not sure about the success) to patent a common phrase here too.

It just goes to show the ridicule of patenting ideas. Sure, some people worked hard on their inventions. But must they be "protected" from competition, at least for THAT long?

That's way too common. Just stupid. Leave it to greedy companies to try to profit out of # and words commonly used. Anything that gets popular or hits now has someone trying to trademark it. They are just greedy; I doubt it will get approved. Patenting should be to promote competition but also allowing an original idea to develop not just go around trademarking just any phrase or word already in use. Advertising techniques are getting so "lazy". For instance, using already used names like Pandora for music to also use it as jewelry just because the name is already known and hope to get more recognition through search engines and association of the word. Just lazy; many people spend years earning a degree in Marketing- put that to use and be original. 

jlove92 : It's not so much about any company's greed (althought there is, indeed, a profit motive) rather than government stacking the deck for them. Patent laws / intellectual property MIGHT be necessary to foster innovation, but it has gone too far. From patenting common expressions to genes, the system needs profund changes to do away with "patent trolls"

janus :
jlove92 :

I have already said Sony has denied the rumor. :p

Here's some proof if you don't believe me.

http://www.geek.com/games/sony-denied-patent-application-for-the-term-lets-play-1644388/

I actually find this rumor funny.

Why would you be able to trademark that term, so many people use it for things unrelated to sony. It's not like they use it for marketing or anything. It just completely made no sense. 

LunarDarkness2 : Even so, having the conversation about IP is essential. How can one patent something so common? It happened in the past, and it will happen again.

Barathemos : Profits. And also government cronyism. According to the Mercatus Center, the number of patent litigations exploded in the 1980s after the federal government created another circuit of courts.

LunarDarkness2 : I think you misread that. Looks like it's saying that their application was denied, rather than that they denied applying for it.


To clear this up (if it does), they said they wanted to use the name for a service that streamed audio, visual, and audiovisual content or something along those lines. From what it sounded to me like, I'd say it was meant to be used as either a new streaming service of their own (like YT or Twitch) or a gaming service with a focus on multiplayer. Regardless, I still can't imagine that they had intended to cut profits from YouTubers who have used the term, though they might ask them to stop doing so. Sony has proven themselves to be too in touch with the modern gaming community to shoot themselves in the foot like that with such a colossally idiotic move. I struggle to think they (or any company with any sense) would blatantly attack their own customers like that. Especially after practically begging them to stream your games and giving them free streaming software so they could do so.

I just don't get where everyone gets off pointing fingers and saying Sony was being greedy because they applied for a patent to a term that is also used for other purposes. Nintendo filed a patent for a device that controls another device that outputs audio and visual signals and stores games in it, but no one tried to say they wanted to patent the right to make game consoles and lock the others out. Lol I think we just read too much into these claims that are intentionally left vague.

This is over the top, and kind of makes me lose a little respect for Sony. It almost seems like they were specifically aiming at the Youtube users who use the headline for their videos. I can't see any other reason they'd go for that specific phrase. And what did they really hope to accomplish from this? Removing all the Youtube videos with the title, or possibly trying to profit from the huge base of users who use the phrase in their videos? I don't get it Sony. Please don't follow suit of Nintendo's recent actions, I don't want to stop loving you like I do...