TechCrunch
Pinterest Files A Trademark Infringement Suit Against Social Travel Startup Pintrips
Pinterest has made a point of discouraging the many social media companies that riff on Pinterest in their own brand names, with some of the more prominent of these going so far as to rebrand their services. And as for the rest? Get ready to go to court.
Today Pinterest filed a suit against Pintrips, a personal travel planning startup, accusing it of trademark infringement, false designation of origin, unfair competition and trademark dilution. “This action arises from Pintrips’ decision to adopt a social media brand that is confusingly similar to Pinterest’s, and its refusal to recognize, discuss or remediate the confusion it causes among consumers,” lawyers for Pinterest write in the complaint.
This comes in the same week that Pinterest won a $7.2 million case and an injunction against a cybersquatter called Qian Jin, who had registered more than 100 names that sounded a bit like Pinterest. (This is the same person who has also filed for trademarks that sound a lot like Quora.) And these are not the only trademark scuffles Pinterest is involved in: Path has filed for an extension of time to oppose Pinterest’s U.S. trademark application as it relates to its scripted P — the issue here is that it looks too much like Path’s “P.” We understand that this could get resolved without any court actions, however.
We wrote about Pintrips back in April of this year, when it launched a “collaborative trip-planning dashboard for tracking flights and prices across destinations in real-time.”
To be fair, if you look at the functionality of Pintrips, there is a lot there specific to planning travel that is not related to what Pinterest currently does. Pinterest’s Pinboards are essentially image-led collections of links from around the web that users can share with each other, with the ability to follow specific Pinners or particular topics. Pintrips, meanwhile, is an online dashboard where users can track price changes for flights they may be interested in taking. Users collate flights by way of a browser plug-in. When installed, a “Pin” button appears next to different flight offers (those who support the service so far include American, Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, United, U.S. Air, Virgin America, as well as searches on Google, Expedia, Kayak, and Orbitz). By clicking the button they get added to your Pintrips dashboard.
Indeed, for Pinterest it is less about the functionality and more about the name attached to it. The full complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (and embedded below), appears to rest on a few key points:
First and foremost, if you say both names out loud, they really do sound a lot alike, more than many of the brands (like Pinfluencer) that have opted to un-pin themselves entirely from the trademark.
There is also the issue that Pinterest has a lot of content on its social network that is related to travel. “Pinterest has made a particularly big splash when it comes to travel,” the complaint notes. “Pinterest users have posted more than 660 million PINS in Pinterest’s ‘Travel’ category to date. Many people use Pinterest as a travel-planning tool.”
It goes on to note how many airlines and hotels, among others, use Pinterest as a marketing platform for their services. (A platform that, incidentally, will soon start to generate money with the introduction of paid ads, which is another reason why sitting alongside a similar sounding service is not sitting right with Pinterest.)
Perhaps most-eye-catching is the fact that certain mechanics on the sites are similar, and have similar names. Specifically, Pinterest believes that Pintrips’ “Pin” button is “confusingly similar” to Pinterest’s “Pin it” button. (They’re pictured up above)
In some regards, the buttons could be one of the more damaging aspects of the case. It is the “Pin it” button that Pinterest relies on to disseminate its service all around the web and to get people to keep using it from whatever other site they visit. Those little buttons also effectively act like little bits of advertising for the service. Pintrips is very much a David to Pinterest’s Goliath in this story, but the worry if it grows, its Pin button on travel sites may be mistaken for a Pin-it button. Moreover, if Pintrips is allowed to keep its button, what’s stopping others from following in that path? All of that spells brand dilution for Pinterest.
We are reaching out to Pintrips for a response and will update this as we learn more. Pinterest is not commenting for this story.
Skype Will Finally Start Syncing Chat Messages Across Devices
If you use Skype on your phone and desktop, you know how annoying its inability to effectively keep your chat message status in sync between different machines can be. After you start Skype on your phone, for example, it downloads and alerts you of all of the sometimes hundreds of messages you’ve received since you last shut it down, even though you’ve long seen them on your desktop. Sometimes, this also means the app will be unresponsive for quite a while (or just crash).
Thankfully, it looks like those days will soon be over, as the Skype team today announced that it plans to roll out chat message status syncing across devices over the next few months.
“We are working to synchronize chat message status across all of your devices so you will know the current status of all of your chats on every device you use to interact with Skype.”
This news was buried deep in a summary of Skype’s most recent (and previously announced) architecture changes and releases.
As the Skype team notes, people now use Skype across multiple devices, so it has decided to finally make syncing a priority. It’s unclear when exactly this capability will start rolling out beyond Microsoft’s vague statement that it’s coming “over the next few months,” however.
Microsoft has recently poured a significant amount of resources into the Skype platform. Not only has it rolled out a new backend architecture that de-emphasizes the peer-to-peer nature of Skype in favor of more centralized services, but it’s also added a number of new features based on these changes.
For example, the company added web-based Skype support to Outlook.com and launched improved push notifications for Windows Phone 8 (even when the app isn’t running) and similar features that its more centralized architecture now enable. It’s also working on connecting the more consumer-focused Skype with its Lync communications suite for businesses.
Twitter's M&A Has Ballooned From $52.2M Last Year To Over $417.5M In 2013
When it comes to acquisitions, it’s clear that Twitter had been spending more money on acquiring technologies and talent in 2013 than in the past few years.
According to the company’s recently filed S-1, Twitter spent $52.2 million in cash and stock on acquisitions in 2012. In the first half of 2013, Twitter spent double that, $112.5 million on acquisitions. Note, this does not include the company’s largest acquisition to date, MoPub, which was purchased in September for $305 million in stock.
Other acquisitions made after June include Trendrr and Marakana (it’s unclear how much the company spent on these acquisitions). Even without these numbers included in the tally, Twitter has spent over $417.5 million on acquisitions this year (which isn’t over).
That’s a 700 percent jump in acquisition spend over the past year.
According to the filing, Twitter spent $52.2 million on 10 acquisitions in 2012, which include Dasient ($19.1 million), Summify, Cabana, RestEngine, Vine, Nclud, Posterous, Hotspots.io, Clutch.io and one other unnamed acquisition. Together, Twitter spent $33.1 million on these acquisitions (minus Dasient). Twitter also agreed to put up as much as $28.5 million of cash and equity consideration (i.e. bonuses) contingent upon the continued employment of some of the employees of these acquired companies.
In the first half of 2013, Twitter spent $112.5 on acquisitions. These include Crashlytics ($38.2 million in stock), Bluefin Labs ($67.3 million in stock), an unknown acquisition that could be We Are The Hunted ($2.5 million), and three others that could be Ubalo, Spindle Labs, and Lucky Sort ($4.5 million altogether). It’s unclear if Spindle is a part of this group because the acquisition was made in mid-June of this year, and it may not have been complete by June 30. In addition, Twitter says it agreed to pay up to $54.9 million of equity to employees from these acquisitions on the conditions of staying at the company.
What’s not listed in the acquisitions note in the filing is the $305 million purchase of MoPub (though Twitter did add this in other sections), and the separate acquisitions of Trendrr and Marakana, which were both announced in August. It’s unclear how much Twitter paid for the latter two companies, but counting MoPub, it’s safe to say that Twitter has spent at least $417.5 million on acquisitions this year.
In 2011, Twitter spent $20.4 million (in cash and stock) for TweetDeck. The other acquisitions from 2011 include Julpan, Whisper Systems, BackType, Bagcheck, and AdGrok. The total purchase price for these acquisitions was $18.5 million in mostly stock, but a small amount of cash. Twitter also greed to pay an additional $15.5 million in cash and equity for employment. There have been other acquisitions prior to 2011, (Fluther, Smallthought Systems, Cloudhopper, Atebits, Mixer Labs, Values of n, and Summize) but the filing doesn’t elaborate on these in the note.
While Twitter has made a number of acquisitions for talent, the company’s biggest acquisitions add core functionalities to Twitter’s advertising platform. Twitter sees MoPub as potentially being a key foundation of the company’s mobile advertising efforts. Adding Bluefin’s technology is key to providing analytics to advertisers, especially when it comes to providing marketers with information about what people are saying about their brands from TV.
Dasient added anti-spam and malware security features and talent to Twitter, and Crashlytics brought app crash report tools to the company. Twitter’s purchase of search engine became the foundation for its own search. According to this Business Insider report, Summize’s acquisition could be worth around $800 million with the current value of Twitter’s stock.
As Twitter’s vision broadens, expect the company to continue to be aggressive with its acquisitions, especially with some of the billion dollars it raises in an IPO.
Ask A VC: Battery Ventures' Brian O'Malley On AngelList Syndicates And The Importance Of A Lead Investor
In this week’s episode of Ask A VC, we welcomed Battery Ventures’ general partner Brian O’Malley into the studio to talk about his perspective on the latest topic du jour, AngelList Syndicates.
O’Malley, who leads Battery’s Seed & Early Stage practices, explained how he thinks AngelList Syndicates will effect the investment ecosystem. We also talked about the importance of having an involved lead investor for an early stage startup, the next big opportunities in e-commerce and more.
Check out the video above for more!
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