Early today, a community of 16,500 people on the popular website Reddit were sent a Cease and Desist letter by the owner of Gaymers.org, due to copyright infringement. The owner of the “gaymer” word is what seems to be the largest problem at hand.

Chris Vizzini, the owner of Gaymer.org, seems to own the trademark, and has held it since 2007. The trademark information is as follows:

IC 042. US 100 101. G & S: Computer services, namely, creating an online community for registered users to participate in competitions, showcase their skills, get feedback from their peers, form virtual communities, engage in social networking and improve their talent; Computer services, namely, hosting and maintaining an online website for others to discuss, receive and disseminate information concerning video games; Computer services, namely, hosting on-line web facilities for others for organizing and conducting online meetings, gatherings, and interactive discussions. FIRST USE: 20030526. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20030526

This trademark is stating that the community of r/Gaymers must stop using the word. Many people within the community are arguing that it is a generic term and that it shouldn’t have been trademarked from the start.

The growth of facebook, Twitter, and other non-profit communities has meant that the term is more often used, and thus, the use of the word is very gray.

The owner of the non-profit sub-reddit has replied to the C&D letter with a very emotional response:

Ladies and gentlemen, this is incredibly important, and quite frankly too important for a TLDR, so please read every bit of this. I type this with a very heavy heart, in fact I plan to be more honest emotionally than I have ever been with anyone in the Internet or in the physical world. Right now, I have been crying for the first time since the day before my father died and I believed my soul had died. My tears stain not only my hands but also the keyboard and even everything I have ever believed in. When my father was dying I had promised him that I would help other people, and I think have done that with you folks, as unconventional as that may seem. Right now the first tears that have escape of my fucking head are leaking onto the keyboard and staining my knuckles. It is a torrent of emotion that I am not used to, please forgive the melodrama, I am just trying to describe how I feel and what to do. My whole life so far, all 22 years has been in the shadow of man of a sinner masquerading as a saint and I have been trying to be most like him. Whether or not it was a lie is a different question, but fuck it is hard to type because I am so overcome by emotion.

Someone wants to take gaymers from us. A cease and desist letter has been sent to Reddit. It would seem that the owner of gaymer.org is an incredible douchenozzle and has decided that we somehow are infringing upon his right to run a very subpar blog. Though Gaymercon seems to be A-OK. It seems pretty fucked up that they seem to be ok using the same GAYMER name, even though we aren’t making money. See what it is, is that this motherfucker from gaymer.org is sending reddit a cease and desist letter that we are using a name that he had trademarked in 2007 though whoever gave him that trademark is clearly not the brightest lightbulb in the box. It is a general term, not really sure how we fucking come into play.

Now here is this dude’s trademark:

IC 042. US 100 101. G & S: Computer services, namely, creating an online community for registered users to participate in competitions, showcase their skills, get feedback from their peers, form virtual communities, engage in social networking and improve their talent; Computer services, namely, hosting and maintaining an online website for others to discuss, receive and disseminate information concerning video games; Computer services, namely, hosting on-line web facilities for others for organizing and conducting online meetings, gatherings, and interactive discussions. FIRST USE: 20030526. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20030526

Clearly, this is ridiculous in terms of his claim against Gaymers, and is demonstrated so.

1. Reddit doesn’t require registered users; you can be anonymous.
2. We do not showcase skills or participate in competitions.
3. It is engaging in social networking, but not to improve talent. The first part of the registration clearly shows that this is a site for gay gamers to focus on games. This subreddit is about the subculture of gaming within the context of being gay. The goals are different.
4. Lastly, the trademark office does not allow you to register what is called Descriptive Trademarks. That means, for instance, you can’t register Grocery Store for a grocery store.

It would be easy for us to argue that gaymers is just descriptive of Gay Gamers and not some sort of corporate logo or trademark. Now if anyone has any question in regards to this claim: I am sure that the gentleman sending the cease and desist, who is bringing these claims against us, would be happy to answer the questions of you 16,000 gaymers. A simple Google search shows his contact info, which of course I don’t want to give out, as that would be doxxing and of course plain immoral, and nobody wants to do something bad or something ethically dubious do they?

Now everybody, I really do want you to know, that I was on my fucking couch crying, tears dripping down my face, because this all could be taken away from you. I am sad, sure, I will be honest, I’m not the happiest guy around. However, you dudes have become happy. People I know have improved their lives, RedditHolmes has gotten married to a gaymer for fucks sake, people have gotten jobs, even some of you have confided in me the want to commit suicide, unless I or someone else convinced you otherwise. Guys, Ladies, and everyone else, this is bullshit, IT IS NONSENSE, quite frankly FUCK THIS ENTIRE LEGAL ENDEAVOR. Reddit will not help us, neither will anyone else. The estimate I got for defending us legally would be above 50k dollars, and honestly since I was begging for food and money trying to pay for gaymers mumble, I don’t think that we are gonna be able to get the money needed.

Here is what I need gaymers, I want you guys to subscribe to /r/internauts. The reason I have selected that particular name is because Mason Wyler suggested it, and it made me giggle SO DEAL. So anyway we may have to transplant not only to this subreddit, but also to offsite, I am open to names what we would call it, but understand that I am devoted to making a better community for you guys. I would have made a video speaking what I thought about, but I am far too prideful to show that, maybe someday I will be a bit different, anyway, join the new subreddit, fuck gaymer.org and have a great night.

A couple hours later MrPookers, one of the sub-reddit’s mods, replied with another response in order to shorten the information that was given to the community:

TL;DR: shit’s goin’ down, y’all! r/gaymers might be banned this week over a cease and desist letter from someone who claims to have trademarked the word “gaymer.” Please subscribe to /r/internauts where we will regroup.You’ve probably read MisterGhost’s announcement regarding gaymer.org’s cease & desist letter served to Reddit. In this post, we the mods are sharing the information we have in as clear, concise, and unbiased language as we could muster.

Citizens, our situation is dire: The term “gaymer” was trademarked in 2007 and its holder, the owner of www.gaymer.org, has served Reddit a Cease & Desist letter. We are not, and have never been, affiliated with that website. Since we cannot change the name of r/gaymers, complying with the trademark would require that all of the gaymers subreddits be removed, and with them, all existing posts and comments.

We do have a viable case for our use of the term, if this matter were to go to court. Primarily, “gaymer” is a word which cannot be legitimately trademarked to begin with. Ideas cannot be trademarked, nor can widely used generic names for things. This is why certain corporations, while striving for market dominance and ubiquity of their products, stress that their brand names not be confused with the general product as a whole. For example: Band-Aid doesn’t sell band-aids, it sells Band-Aid brand bandages. LEGO doesn’t sell lego, it sells LEGO blocks. You don’t wipe your nose with kleenexes, but with Kleenex brand tissues. The distinction is important because if all commercially sold bandages became widely known simply as band-aids, Band-Aid would lose the trademark to its own name. Anyone could call their bandages “band-aids.”

Here’s an example of the term “gaymer” being used in 1997 in a Usenet post as a descriptive term for a gay gamer. Here’s another example in a blog post from 2002. The term “gaymers” is a purely descriptive term for “gay gamers”, it’s commonly used online in a context completely unrelated to the trademark, and purely descriptive terms cannot be trademarked. This trademark shouldn’t have been granted in the first place; it was invalid then, and it is invalid now.

In our case, we could argue that “gaymer” is naturally a descriptive word for what a gay gaymer is, and that the trademark should be revoked. Riding this case to court, however, could require moneys on the order of $50,000. We don’t have that money, and contesting the trademark is the only way to truly free the word “gaymer” for gay gamers everywhere.

When you’re angry, the desire to demonize people is strong. Know, though, that everyone here is doing what they have to do. Reddit isn’t invested in its subreddits enough to launch an expensive legal battle to protect a few of them. The trademark’s holder has to ask Reddit to stop violating its trademark, because it’s legally his responsibility to see that it is enforced. If you’re like us, you’re angry about this bullshit situation. We must not, however, let it devolve into a witchhunt. Petitioning Reddit on this, or blaming Reddit for this are not viable or recommended efforts. Our goal, as always, is to make the world a better place.

Confusingly, gaymer.org has expressed support for GaymerCon (imgur screenshot). We do not, however, know anything else about their interactions.

Where do we go from here? MisterGhost has set up /r/internauts as a sort of refugee camp/potential new home. We don’t know how this week will to play out. For all we know the admins will destroy all the gaymer subreddits outright on Monday morning, or they might figure out a way to change the names for us. We don’t even know what powers they have at their disposal or when they will choose to wield them.

Finally, beware: much personal information of the trademark’s owner is dangerously exposed online and you must take care not to link to it anywhere on Reddit, especially as there may be a great deal of hostility towards him. Linking to it counts as doxxing, and may get offenders shadowbanned. Please do not abuse him. Remember: we want his good will. He may be able to tell Reddit to let us call ourselves gaymers.

If reddit complies with this cease and desist order, /r/gaymers and its entire history of posts and comments could be destroyed. In the nearly two years of its existence, we’ve had agift exchange and meetups that have brought together hundreds of gaymers all over the world, spawned guilds and corporations† and brought two gaymers together in an actual, real-life marriage. We have built a very real community here. They can take the name gaymers from our subreddit, we can’t fight that battle legally — but we have to keep our history.

With Love, the /r/gaymers mod team

The users of the sub-reddit have been trying to seek out help and results in order to keep their identity and their “home.” I hope to see some results by the end of the week, as there have been a lot of comments and other posts about this legal issue within these two different groups.

~Dru Chan

Questions? Contact me at Dru@guyspy.com or check me out on Twitter.