So We Almost Got Sued by Replit

Replit Help
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So a few months ago, @prisems published a Repl called “Replit Media” (Now known as “Media Dash”, you’ll see why as you read on). You can find the Repl here: https://replit.com/@MediaDash/MediaDash?v=1

Replit Media was supposed to be a site where you could get your account and your Repls featured on the site. But it was mainly about what was going on inside Replit, all the cool latest Repls, and more. Now, I thought this was a pretty cool concept at the time. I asked @prisems if I could join and help. They said yes, and I was pretty excited. But while looking at the code, I decided that this wasn’t enough. So I threw a few ideas out to @prisems and we decided we would add a system to request yourself to be featured on the site, and we would also add a forum. You can find that Repl here: https://replit.com/@MediaDash/MediaDash-V2?v=1

We never officially released V2, but here’s something crazy that happened while I was working on the backend one day. While I was coding up some features for the forum, @prisems joined the Repl and started freaking out in chat. It turns out that a few days ago Replit had sent Earth an email informing us that we had 3 days to change our name and branding and threatened to have their lawyers intervene if we didn’t comply. The logo at the time was just the Replit logo with a dark orange background. This was confusing since we were using THEIR PLATFORM, and if they didn’t want us to use their name and logo, they could just take our Repl down and email us about it. Instead, they go after some randos on the internet and say they’ll sue us over our tiny little project. We weren’t doing anything to hurt the brand, and in fact, people were liking it. It got 100+ runs and a few likes, and we got several comments on the Repl and here on the forum from people wanting to get themselves featured on the site. Anyways, @prisems didn’t read the email until we had 24 hours to change our branding. I DM’ed a bunch of people on Discord to help us think of a new name and created a post on Ask as well. Eventually, we decided on the name “Media Dash” because it sounded nice and we were running out of time to think of anything better. Luckily we weren’t too far into V2 so it wasn’t too hard to replace all the images with the new branding.

Here are some resources related to this:

TL;DR Replit didn’t like our name and logo and threatened to sue if we didn’t change it.

Ever since this little incident, I’ve had a few questions.

  • What can we do with the Replit logo in our Repls?
  • Are we allowed to use the Replit logo in our Repls?
  • Is there something wrong with the name of your Repl containing the word “Replit”?
  • Why did this happen in the first place?

I’d like these questions to be answered by an official Replit worker here on the forum.

As for the rest of you, what are your weird stories? What wacky things have happened to you while using Replit? Have you ever had to go through something like this?

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@QwertyQwerty88 why did you move this to replit help? this is a story about how we almost got sued, and asking for forum feedback on what things other users have had to go through.

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  1. The forum-feedback tag is meant for giving feedback to the forum, not getting it.
  2. You are wanting help from a Replit staff member. Actually, now that I think about it, it might belong in Support.
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gotcha, but this should still be in general, right?

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No. The General category is for posts about programming or the forum in general (tagged with forum-feedback). Like I said in my previous post:

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Meh, I don’t see a point in deleting the posts. I think this information is good to know when making posts. I might suggest and make a guide about it (or resource, Ian used that for a resource about the forum, although that wasn’t my intended use for the tag) so people can know what’s “off-topic” and what category to put posts in with what tag.

Roblox recently did something similar to this, where you can’t make new games with “Blox” in the title (I think there were more restrictions but I forgot). Old games, like “Bloxburg” and “Blox fruits” weren’t affected by this, but I thought it was interesting.

Mmm, no. But I did create a Repl called “Repler” which was supposed to be a bad Twitter remake. I made it, like, right after finishing 100DoC, so the code kinda sucks. Anyway, it got featured on Replit showcase (an event made by @DillonB07 and @TechPandaPro on the Replit YouTube channel) (not because it was good, because I submitted it).

@python660 why did you laugh at OP? I mean I don’t think they would have gotten sued over this but it was still kinda serious. Do you not believe Earth and joe?

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lol i meant the fact that replit almost brought in the lawyers was kind of funny

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These are probably some good points to clarify.

@qirtaiba Could we get some official clarification from Replit’s legal team?

A completely unofficial and uninformed attempt at explaining why you were contacted:
Basically a random user could have seen the account and Repls and thought it was official, if you’d posted something bad it could result in issues for Replit as a company. Mainly, I think this was to prevent impersonation (not implying you were attempting to impersonate Replit) and to prevent people from mistakenly thinking the account actually could ‘speak’ for Replit, if that makes any sense.

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I have some topics and comments on hand to help prove this was indeed a real event:

And here’s a screenshot of an earlier comment back when we called it “Replit Media”:

image

Here’s some chats when I got the news:

image
image815×414 21.8 KB

(MediaDash is @prisems)

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Oh, I forgot to mention, some official templates made by Replit include the Replit logo. So I think it’s fine to use. I use it all the time. Also, how the heck are the replit.css Repls allowed?

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I think it’s moreso about the potential for users to think that Replit was running the Repl and that the content was created by Replit and the risk that could pose to Replit as a company if anything bad was posted. Also, understandably, Replit may have thought that would be a good name to reserve in case they do something similar in the future and want to make an official account to host all official articles/posts.

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I’ve updated the post to include some of the resources posted later in the thread.

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Yeah, that is pretty likely. Though if that really was the case, Replit went a bit overboard considering they were going to involve lawyers and sue. Why couldn’t Replit just temporarily take down the Repl until needed changes were made? Afterall it is their own service.

(I remember reading someone said the same thing I just can’t seem to find it)

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Why didn’t you use Replit Auth in Media Dash if it’s about Replit?

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I am aware of a similar incident. I have never had Replit come after me personally though. The closest thing to Replit coming after me was when Ray’s bot mistook something in my Repl description as profanity and blacklisted it, but that isn’t really the same.

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It’s in the original post.

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??? What do you mean? We did use Replit Auth? What does this have to do with getting sued?

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I saw that one. It’s pretty interesting.

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I don’t have much to add to what other commenters have posted: they are correct that we are required to enforce limits on the use of our trademarks (which includes the logo and the word “Replit”) to avoid confusion about whether community projects are official, and to avoid the trademarks becoming “diluted” through unauthorized usage.

There are ways of referring to a trademark without implying any kind of official authorization to use it. I can’t offer you advice on specific wording, but in general you can refer to Replit in a descriptive sense, so long as you don’t use Replit as part of your project’s name, use the Replit logo, or otherwise imply that it’s an authorized project.

With all that said, I’m sorry that you felt that you ever were at risk of being sued by Replit. We don’t want members of our community to feel that our team will bring the legal hammer down on them, just because we are drawing a line around the use of our trademarks. When we bring up these limits, it is meant as friendly guidance not as a threat. I hope this helps!

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This is good to know. Are we allowed to use modifications of logos like three blue dots instead of three orange squares?

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