The Fine Bros Withdraws Trademark For “React” Videos

Remember when Sony tried to trademark the term “Let’s Play” but was rejected? Given that it’s such a generic term, no doubt had they been successful, plenty of videos with the “Let’s Play” term in their title could have potentially been in trouble. Recently the folks at The Fine Bros attempted something similar, but thankfully they saw reason and have since pulled their request.

For those who are hearing about it for the first time, basically The Fine Bros wanted to trademark the term “React”. Given that the majority of their videos are based around reactions, like “Kids react to…”, it made sense, but it also spelt trouble because there are tons of reaction videos online to a variety of things, meaning that if they were successful, they could have technically policed such videos.

Naturally the internet reacted very negatively to their idea, but like we said the creators understood what was going on and have since pulled their attempts to trademark the term. They also issued an apology which reads, “We’re here to apologize. We realize we built a system that could easily be used for wrong. We are fixing that. The reality that trademarks like these could be used to theoretically give companies (including ours) the power to police and control online video is a valid concern, and though we can assert our intentions are pure, there’s no way to prove them.”

In any case it looks like the issue has been dropped, but what do you guys think? Would you have been fine if they went ahead with the trademark?

Tyler Lee
Categories: Web
Tags: Legal, YouTube