The founder of popular Reddit forum WallStreetBets is suing the social media company, claiming he was wrongly banned from moderating the group and blocked from his efforts to establish a brand.
According to a lawsuit filed Feb. 15 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, Jaime Rogozinski is seeking a court to grant him ownership of the WallStreetBets trademark. He is also demanding that Reddit be banned from using the WallStreetBets brand unless he is reinstated on the forum.
Rogozinski’s saga, as detailed in the lawsuit, paints the picture of a scrappy individual investor who, after the Great Recession, wanted to help others tap Wall Street advice, only to be dumped by a big tech company. After WallStreetBets grew into a forum with more than 1 million subscribers, Rogozinski learned that his account was suspended in April 2020 – shortly after he filed an application WallStreetBets as a trademark, according to the lawsuit.
Reddit told Rogozinski that his account was suspended for violating company policy by “attempting to monetize a community,” according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that “people use Reddit to market and sell everything from investment advice to bodily fluids.”
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“Rogzinski’s true crime was trying to control the brand he created in the first place, a famous brand that helped Reddit to a $10 billion valuation,” the lawsuit reads. It added that “Reddit’s dreams … turned out to be Mr. Rogozinski’s nightmare, as the company insists ‘if you build it, we’ll take it from you.'”
Jaime Rogozinski, founder of Reddit forum WallStreetBets, speaks during the CoinDesk 2022 Consensus Festival in Austin, Texas June 11, 2022. Bloomberg
In a statement to CBS MoneyWatch, Reddit called the lawsuit “completely frivolous.”
“Jaime was removed from Reddit as a moderator of r/WallStreetBets and banned from the community moderators for attempting to enrich himself,” the company said.
The company added: “This lawsuit is yet another transparent attempt to enrich itself. It is significant that he is filing this lawsuit three years after his ban from r/WallStreetBets and long after the community has grown in mainstream popularity without his involvement.”
Although Reddit removed Rogzinski as a moderator, the company allowed him to continue using the social media platform, a spokesperson added.
trademark dispute
In March 2020, Rogozinski filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office WallStreetBets for use with online and print publications about commerce and finance, for apparel and to provide an online forum for financial and commerce information, according to his lawsuit.
However, in May of that same year, Reddit filed the first of four trademark applications with the US Patent Office WallStreetBets as a trademark. Reddit has also taken legal action to prevent Rogozinski from claiming ownership of WallStreetBets, the lawsuit states.
“This case is about stopping Reddit’s systematic theft and holding the company accountable for its wrongdoing,” the lawsuit reads.
WallStreetBets emerged as a meeting place for retail investors during the pandemic — after Rogozinski was banned from the site — propelling the stocks of companies like AMC Entertainment, GameStop, and others into the stratosphere for a while. But the subreddit’s brand is one of the more well-known areas of Reddit that could prove to be a valuable asset for whoever controls the brand.
Among the aims of his lawsuit are for the court to declare that “he, and not Reddit, owns the WallStreetBets brand.” He also wants the court to order Reddit to stop using the WallStreetBets name “unless and until the company reinstates Mr. Rogozinski as the senior moderator of the r/WallStreetBets subreddit.”