YouTube Transcript:
Figma threatens companies using "Dev Mode"

Dear lovable, I am the general counsel
at Figma Incorporated. Figma is the
owner of the Dev Mode trademark, which
has been used extensively around the
world in connection with our software
platform. We're flattered that you agree
Dev Mode is the ideal name for a
software tool that helps bridge the gap
between design and development. But as
inventors and entrepreneurs, we're sure
you can understand that we need to
protect our intellectual property. We
ask that you please cease all use of dev
mode in connection with your products
and services, rename your tool, and
remove all references to our mark from
your website, marketing materials, and
other public-f facing content. We'd like
to resolve this amicably so we can each
get back to building great products for
our customers. Please write back as soon
as possible. Let me know you've agreed
to this request. I don't know how to
start this one other than to say Figma.
What the Are you joking? This is
one of the most absurd things I've ever
seen. I have heard weird stories of
Figma doing strange things behind the
scenes, but this takes the cake. There's
a lot of layers to this, a lot of drama
adjacent to this, a lot of trademarks
that are kind of that they
currently have. But I'm going to talk
about this. I need a little bit of
cushion because if they sue me, I need
the money to protect myself. So, since
Fig was not paying me, we're going to do
a quick word from today's sponsor and
then dive right in. Wouldn't it be cool
to see your brand in a video like this
one being shown to hundreds of thousands
of motivated engineers that want to
learn more about cool technologies and
solutions and maybe even buy them and
pay for them at their company? Well, I
have some good news for you. We are a
little low on inventory for the year,
but we do have a couple slots left. You
might be surprised how cheap it is to
sponsor a video like this. If you want
to learn more and put your brand in
front of thousands of experienced
engineers, especially those who are in
the AI space, you can take my word for
it, or you can read all these comments
of people saying how great the ads are,
or you can read the commentary from our
other sponsors about how useful these
ads have been for them. If you want to
join the set of awesome brands that have
been helping us make this content
happen, email us today at
youtube3.gg and you can learn more at
t3.gg/sponsorme. I'm gonna be honest,
guys. When I first saw this, I assumed
it was fake. Quick bias check just
because I think it's important. Lovable
has sponsored videos before. They are
not sponsoring this. I have not reached
out or talked to them at all about this.
I think one employee is in my chat, but
this video has no relation to Lovable
whatsoever. I'm covering this cuz I'm
pissed at Figma. You can say I'm biased
or whatever, but if this was any other
company, I swear I would be just as
angry. This was my immediate public
response that it seems like people
enjoyed. And we also see here from Cara
some other fun trademarks they have
including schema and my personal
favorite config as well as summit and
forge. The reason they have config for
those who are wondering is because they
have a conference named config. And I
happen to know some drama about this
conference right now that I have not I'm
not in a position to share yet but I
have a feeling it will be public in the
near future. Let's just say Lovable is
not the only company that's getting some
really weird notices from our friends
over at Figma. This is absurd. We need
to talk a bit about what's going on
here, why they're doing this, and why
trademark works this way at all. What
the Figma? Let's get started. So,
I was hunting through for trademarks.
Funny enough, there's a lot that mention
dev mode or something like it somewhere.
Most of these are nonsense and almost
all of them are dead. But dev mode, it's
live and registered from Figma. If we
look here, we can see this trademark was
registered in November last year. It was
originally applied for in June, but only
officially became a trademark as
approved by the USPTO end of last year,
which means that there are probably a
lot of other companies calling things
dev. That is particularly strange
because I am near certain that there's a
lot of prior art here. So, first off, we
should probably ask WTF is dev mode. And
to be clear that we're not talking about
dev mode from other products. We're
going to add the
TM. We want people to think we mean dev
mode, the generic, when we actually mean
dev mode, the product. If you're somehow
not familiar with Figma, it is a design
tool similar to what I'm doing over here
with Excaladraw. By the way, I just said
the name Excaladraw. So, if all the
comments are, what's the tool he's using
to draw, I'm going to go insane. Figma's
originally focused almost entirely on
helping designers with a canvas built
for making applications. Back in my day
when I was learning how to code and
build websites, you would mock up your
websites in Photoshop. A lot of tools
like Photoshop, Illustrator, and other
graphic software were being used to make
mocks for apps. And it was realized by a
handful of people that that's not ideal.
The strange differences between what
editing an image looks like and what
editing an app mockup looks like meant
that there was a pretty rough spot there
where you would either try and force
design work into Photoshop or you'd give
up and go to my old favorite software,
Dreamweaver. I know the demographics for
this channel, a lot of you guys are old
enough that you absolutely used the OG
Dreamweaver. So don't pretend you
haven't. I know you have. Don't lie.
Pre-EA Adobe Macromedia Dreamweaver
before Adobe was so big they weren't
allowed to acquire other companies. The
good old days. Oh, Dreamweaver. Yeah.
So, it kind of felt like there was a
spectrum where on one side you had
Photoshop and on the other side you had
Visual Studio or other like really heavy
idees. We had a little spot here that
was Dreamweaver, but it still wasn't
like anywhere near as visual as the
average like designer would probably be
looking for. And as such, more and more
people started to try and figure out
what it looks like to build something in
this range that is more apply and
developer focused than Photoshop, but
more designheavy and not codeheavy
unlike Dreamweaver and VSC. This in
between area started to get random
products thrown into it. We had Sketch.
We had Adobe XD. I don't know which came
out when, and I'm too lazy to look it
up. I'm pretty sure Sketch was first,
but I could be wrong. But eventually, we
had Figma. Figma's biggest
differentiator at the time is that it
was browser based. It also had a desktop
app, but it was browser based. The
desktop app was an Electron app, but the
real innovation of Figma was the crazy
stuff they were doing to make it perform
well in the browser. So, you could do a
canvas-like experience like we're doing
here, but with app mockups. That
combined with how generous the free tier
was meant Figma very quickly took over.
And by the time I joined Twitch in like
2017, Figma had fully taken over the
company. It was very clear. Sketch was a
one-time purchase license, but the
commercial side of it was a bit of a
mess. Adobe XD was an Adobe product, so
nobody liked it anyways. Figma very
quickly established itself as the winner
of this app focused design tool. It was
a weird in between, but it turns out
that weird in between is worth a lot of
money. Enough so that Adobe killed XD
and tried to buy Figma, got really far,
inked the deal and everything, and then
they got blocked by enough courts
because of monopolistic practice that it
didn't go through. And now Figma, since
they literally can't be acquired,
they're too big to be acquired
effectively after that decision, they
now have to win in order for all of the
value the company has to ever be
realized. If Figma's ever going to IPO
so that its stock could become real
money, they have to win hard now.
Previously, they could have had a nice
exit with an acquisition that's been
ruled out by the courts. So, their only
option is to make something so big, so
dominant, such a strong force in the
market that when they eventually go to
sell stock, it will be worth a ton of
money and they can make their money
finally. Fun thing that just happened
after I finished filming the video. My
editor will stuff this wherever it fits.
Figma just filed for a US IPO last year.
They were valued at 12.5 billion after
it closed a deal to allow employees and
early investors to sell some of their
stake to new and existing investors.
They are now filing for the IPO. Makes a
lot of sense. They need their brand to
be perceived as as valuable as possible
right now more than ever. So, they're
going to be fighting tooth and nail to
make sure any potential external risk to
Figma's visible path to success is
destroyed. Because if anything even
looks like it might get in their way of
success, the IPO goes much much worse.
We're talking about like a 5 to 10%
difference being billions of dollars,
they're going to fight hard now more
than ever. And that's why we're going to
start seeing this type of
behavior more than we've ever seen it
before. So Figma's had just absurd
levels of success, but it needs to keep
going if it's going to eventually turn
that stock into money. Figma's original
threats were Sketch and Adobe XD. But if
we look at Figma's market share, you'll
understand that these things were not
actual threats. Do you understand? This
is 2022. It's gotten worse since Sketch
was doing well and Figma just comes in
and wins the entire market. Entire
market. It's not close. It's not like
they have 30% or something. Figma
won. So the risk is no longer can Figma
win the design world. That's already
over. Figma already won design. That's
not a conversation we need to have
anymore. The numbers prove it. Figma's
the winner of the design world. So,
what's left? I'll argue there are two
things Figma has to do. Now, thing one,
find other markets to maintain growth.
And two, protect the design industry at
all costs. This is Figma's mission now.
figure out how we can grow by branching
to adjacent places and protect the
design industry so that we never lose
that thing that we have a huge
percentage of. So what does part one
here look like? Ever heard of Fig Jam?
Fig Jam was an attempt to do something
similar to what I'm doing over there in
Excal. The goal of Fig Jam was a
collaborative workspace whiteboard thing
so that you could talk with your team
about stuff. This was a really
interesting idea for a handful of
reasons. First off, the people who run
these types of things at companies tend
to lean product, not engineering. If
you're trying to talk about different
things in your product and the direction
you want your team to be moving in,
that's probably going to be led by a
product person. And if you were to
spectrum out like what different roles
exist at a company, I'd say product,
it's all the way here. Maybe if we go a
bit further, we'd say support, it's all
the way to the left there. Then you have
product, then you have design, then you
have front end, dev, then backend.
Roughly, this is meant to give a a rough
idea of like how things relate back and
forth. And you could argue that each
layer here, the person in the middle is
the bridge between the other two. So
when support notices a bunch of
customers having a problem, they'll
probably talk to product, the product
manager, product team, whoever. Product
will figure out what issues exist on the
support side and then talk with design
about how to make the product clearer so
these mistakes don't keep happening.
Design will then work with product and
edge in order to make sure those designs
can actually be implemented and get them
started in the implementation. Then
front end will yell at backend to make
sure their stuff actually works so they
can actually ship it. This is a real
rough idea of how companies work. What
this means is that product is the place
where a lot of the conversations really
start and because of that product tends
to be the group that leads the meetings
where we do big product planning,
quarterly management, all the things
that you would use a fancy whiteboard
with a team for. So if your product
exclusively lives here and your goal is
to expand like this, it makes a lot of
sense you would go left first because
that's kind of your bread and butter.
And product tools are garbage. Product
teams are the reason Jira still exists
because they're tolerant of terrible
things and Figma really wanted to fix
that with Fig Jam and they failed. I
think Fig Jam's actually dead. If not,
it's close to it. I think they formally
announced that. I might be wrong though.
What was was it not Fig Jam? What's the
Figma thing they shut down? Oh, Google
Jam Board. That was Google's. Okay, I
misremembered. Google Jam Board is the
one that is dead. Figma is still alive
and well. I don't know anybody using it,
but it does still exist. Thank you,
chat. Anyways, Fig Jam was very clearly
an attempt to expand Figma's presence
further towards product. But that's not
the only thing they did. Soon after, not
that soon after, but relatively soon
after, they started expanding the other
way. And that's what dev mode is. Dev
mode was an attempt by Figma to make it
easier to take a mock in the Figma app
and export code from it. Be it CSS,
HTML, even theoretically React code. And
ideally, if they get everything right,
you'd be able to throw it into your
editor directly or use the Figma plugin
inside of VS Code. I have a whole video
about this that I dropped right when it
was originally announced. I tried
playing with it, didn't have a good time
with it, and moved on. And honestly
speaking, I've been using Figma less and
less. I barely touch it nowadays.
There's a combination of reasons why.
Tailwind's made a lot easier to mock
things up fast. More importantly, AI
tools have made it comically easier to
make a decent enough looking thing. And
also, I don't have a designer that's
working with me full-time right now. So,
there's less incentive. And usually when
I hire designers, I'm hiring engineing
ones. And they're just going to start by
going into the code anyways. So, they
went left with Fig Jam and they went
right with dev mode. These were their
attempts to expand the potential market
for Figma products. And I'd go as far as
to say they weren't very successful.
We'll do a quick poll because this is an
audience of devs. Have you used Figma's
dev mode? Yes, often. Yes, not often.
Yes, stopped using. No, never used. I
use it, but only because it has a ruler.
Oof. Yeah, the dev mode experience sucks
ass. This is what I've heard mostly. I'm
very familiar with Framework. It's a
cool product. So, my dev heavy audience,
here you go. The numbers kind of speak
for themselves. There aren't a lot of
people who are using Figma's dev mode,
especially when we again compare to
those insane numbers here where they
have like well over 80% of the
market, like way way over. It's higher
than that now. I saw numbers as high as
95 in the past. So, they won design.
They can't even make a splash in dev.
They're struggling a lot. So I I hope
that we've established here Figma is
struggling a lot to break into these
other spaces, especially the dev world.
But something else happened that's
important. This is where we need to talk
about point two. AI dev tools got really
good. Important to realize how much this
has changed the trajectory of Figma.
Figo's bet was effectively that these
designs were so valuable and developers
needed these designs so badly that
building a tool for the designers to
provide mocks that are usable and useful
to the developers could be a many many
multi-billion dollar industry. And they
weren't wrong, certainly not at the
time. But some of these AI dev tools
have meaningfully reduced the amount of
help you need from designers. They're
far from perfect. I'm not going to sit
here and pretend otherwise. But they are
so much better than devs previously
would have needed to rely on. There's a
spectrum I drew a while back. I want to
see if I can find it. There's going to
be a weird comparison, so hear me out.
It's a diagram I drew when I was talking
about HTMX versus Nex.js. And the reason
I drew this diagram is to try and frame
the like back end and front end and when
different parts are necessary. If you're
building an app that is just a couple of
forms with a really complex backend that
has to scale well and process tons of
data and the website is just a basic
form and a page that shows the current
state of the infra, you don't need much
on the front end side. So if we were to
like show how far and how much any given
piece needs, the back end would be a
majority of the complexity and the front
end here would be really small. The back
end could be this big complex thing. The
front end doesn't have to be. But there
is a spectrum here where the server is
more complex versus the client being
more complex. If the back end is where
the complexity lives, building that
backend with front-end tools probably
isn't the best bet. Even using Node
might not be the best bet depending on
what you're building here. But if you're
building a Twitter clone, the back end
is a hell of a lot less complex and the
front end is a hell of a lot more
complex. At which point, the tools you
pick should be able to handle that level
of complexity well. Building a good
Twitter clone that feels nice to use
with HTMX would suck. the same way
building a complex infrastructure with
Nex.js would suck. The interesting thing
about HTMX is it meaningfully moved the
line for where do you need to adopt a
front-end
framework previously in order to have a
front-end framework that was like could
go further left than here. Let's say you
would need to adopt something like
React. You'd have to go all in on single
page apps and let the client own its
state. As soon as you have a certain
level of interactivity in your page, you
effectively need a clientside framework.
HTMX said, "Wait, do you though?" And
they moved this line pretty far down.
So, there are lots of levels of
complexity your front end apps can have
where you don't need to adopt a tool
like React. HTMX is much more backend
focused. It lets you update the state of
the page from the server without having
to reload the entire content of the
page, which makes more interactivity
possible without having to write
clientside code. Before HTMX and
honestly before intercooler and things
like it, if you had a comment section on
your blog and somebody left a comment,
the whole page would have to reload to
see that or they'd have to load some
JavaScript single page app style. So
when they leave the comment, it would
update the DOM using React, Angular,
even jQuery. A lot of clientside code
would be necessary in order to do that
type of good experience. HTMX challenged
the notion and said, "Wait, for basic
page updates that are serverdriven, what
if we just update the HTML in place
instead, which is really nice and
powerful." And there's a reason why
people love HTMX. It's because they
don't need all the things React can do.
They're not building a heavily
interactive app like T3 chat. They're
trying to build something that just
shows what the backend's current state
is with a little bit more interactivity.
So, why am I talking about all of this?
Well, I'm going to copy paste this guy
into our new diagram. And hopefully
you'll see why. If we change this from
server to client to design and develop
and we change this to front-end code and
designs or mocks, I'll even say Figma
mocks specifically. Kill all that. There
would be a point where a front-end dev
isn't good enough to design the thing.
If you look at like my homepage, you
don't need a designer to design this
page. If somebody was to take the time
to mock this up in Figma, I would
probably make fun of them and I hope you
would too because it does not it's not a
complex design. This does not need a
whole lot of effort to make. But if
you're trying to do something like T3
chat, you'd benefit a lot more for
making proper mocks in something. So
it's important to think for any given
project, how complex is this design such
that we want to take the time to mock it
and how competent are your devs to get
by without having those mocks. So for
some projects, the bar might be here cuz
oh, we don't really care. We just needed
to show the data quick. we don't care
how nice it looks. Some projects might
be all the way down here where it's
like, "Oh, mocks are the only thing that
make this product viable. Without them,
we're not going to get anything done."
Previously, I would argue there was very
little you could do with just front-end
code. You effectively needed to have a
designer doing things in Figma if what
you were building was more complex than
like a basic form or a dashboard. And by
dashboard, I mean just a table
effectively. And even then, having
design help would be nice. The crazy
thing that has happened due to AI tools
is very similar to HTMX where these AI
focused developer tools have effectively
made it so you can go way further
without needing a designer to help. If
we were to say that further left is a
beautiful design and further right is a
I don't know T3.gg design. My design
capabilities pre these AI tools were
like here and I needed a designer to
save me. But now that we have Vzero,
Lovable, Bolt, and all these other
tools, especially Vzero, because it's
really good at like UI, this has shifted
quite a bit for me. And I've been amazed
at how far it has. I never thought I
would see the day where I could just go
to a chatbot and say, "Hey, make this."
And it will make something that looks
good enough. And since the output is
code, not a design in a mock software, I
can dive into the code and play with it
the way I normally do. So, it allows for
me as a dev to go way further in design
without needing a designer, without
needing Figma, without needing mocks,
and it comes out in the language I want,
which is code, ideally react if you're a
React developer. And now I can take this
design that I previously would have had
to pay a designer for, then spend all
the time making a first version, go back
to the designer, get more feedback, and
like iterate back and forth. Now, it's I
prompt an AI bot. It gives me a starting
point with code. If there are things I
don't like about it, I ask it to try
again. If I just don't like it entirely,
I will hit the reroll button. It's so
much easier to get way further without
needing to go hire a designer. When I
first started Ping, my first hire was a
designer because it was so hard to find
good designers and I was not competent
enough to do it. The original versions
of Ping were so disgustingly,
hilariously ugly. But I don't have a
designer I employ right now. I have a
design engineer working with us
part-time. Shout out to Dom. He's been
killing it. But we don't have a
full-time designer anymore because we
haven't needed it for a while. We
originally moved away from having
designers. We were focused on dev tools.
Now we're not and we still haven't found
the need for it. You can go so much
further without a designer now. And this
puts 2 here for Figma at risk. The
design industry is legitimately at risk
of getting smaller now. Previously,
every company shipping software probably
needed a designer, at least part-time.
Now, a significant portion of them
probably don't. That's a huge risk for
Figma, especially because the output of
these tools isn't something you can use
in Figma. The output of these tools is
on the other side. It's something you
can use in your editor. If these AI
tools were spitting out Figma mock, so
you need a designer to go in and tidy
up. They'd be in a great place, and I'm
sure they'd be hyped. Instead, they're
throwing really, really weird pot shots
and going out of their way to damage
these AI code building tools because
they are putting Figma's entire place in
the industry at risk. And again, I can't
say the details, but I will say
confidently, Lovable is not the only
company dealing with like this
right now. And it makes sense why
Figma's in a weird spot. Figma can't be
acquired. And again, at a company of
this size, acquisition is usually your
exit plan. So, they can't be acquired.
Figma struggles to win devs. Figma's
industry is at risk. So, what happens
when you can't sell to make your money?
You can't expand the marketplace to make
more money and the thing you're
currently making money from is at risk.
This leads to what I call the Netscape
effect. Microsoft realized that the
internet was going to risk the entire
model they had for how software was
going to work long term. Microsoft
realized that people wouldn't be going
to stores to buy discs with licensing
fees anymore. They saw Netscape and its
success in the browser space and
realized, "Oh, we need to win here." And
that's why they made a free browser to
compete with the paid Netscape app and
also built functionality into Windows to
make it really really good for Internet
Explorer and kind of hostile for other
browsers. And that led to Microsoft
getting sued so hard that they ended up
having government people full-time
employed at Microsoft just looking for
more antitrust practice going on in
order to prevent this in the future.
It's one of like the biggest antitrust
lawsuits in history. And by the time it
wrapped up, Netscape had already shut
down because they were higma's the new
Microsoft, which is crazy when you think
about it. But that's the position
they're in. They're losing their base.
Their base is getting smaller. They're
struggling to grow into other spaces,
and the whole industry category they're
in looks like it is starting to
shrink. Shitless right now. And when
you're a billiondoll company that is
scared, that fear tends to come out like
this with what I would consider to be an
absolutely trademark suit. I do
want to try and steal manand them quick
because there are real reasons you would
do something like this. Why would you
ever do this? Obviously, the optics of
this are terrible. If Figma's goal was
to make devs like them, they just made
that 10x harder for themselves for no
good reason. They probably assumed
Lovable was a safe thing to sue because
Lovable isn't as popular in the dev
world as some of the other tools are.
They're wrong though because that went
really viral and the optics of this are
terrible. But again, to try and steel
man it, the only reason your company
would have a real vested interest in
doing this other than screwing with your
competition is if you don't enforce your
trademark, you lose it. So if I was to
trademark Vibe Code for example, use it
in my product, had a trademark through
USPTO where I own the word mark of Vibe
Code and then everyone started using the
term and I didn't enforce it. I didn't
go after them and say, "Hey, that's not
actually Vibe Code because that's my
trademark, a petition could be made to
strip that trademark from its owner."
This is going on right now with
JavaScript. Believe it or not, Oracle
owns the JavaScript trademark because
they acquired Sun Micro Systemystems who
owned the trademark originally.
JavaScript isn't Java, but it was
similar enough and the goal was to feel
like it and more importantly be as
portable as Java, which is why it got
named JavaScript. Neither Sun nor Oracle
have ever done anything meaningful with
it. Oracle in particular has never done
anything with JavaScript. They don't
have a JS engine. They don't have JS
materials. They have one tiny little SDK
for web apps that doesn't even work,
hasn't maintained for a very long time
that they have used as their
justification for maintaining the
trademark. They've also done some
sketchy stuff like sue a random dev who
made a Rust for JavaScript devs book,
suing him and threatening him because he
doesn't have the right to use the word
JavaScript in the title of the book.
Absolute absurdity. They're currently
being sued by our friends over at Dino.
I have a whole video about this, too, if
you're curious. Dino is going through
the process to argue to USPTO that
JavaScript is a generic term and it
cannot be restricted in the way it is
right now because they're not using the
trademark. They are keeping what they
consider to be an invalid trademark and
personally I do as well. I don't think
Oracle is using this trademark in a
meaningful way. They are holding it so
they can sue people for using it, not
because they're using it themselves. The
only good faith why I think they might
be doing it that is even slightly
defensible is if they give up the
JavaScript trademark, it might risk the
Java trademark, which they are
absolutely using and enforcing. That
line is blurry enough I can sympathize a
bit, but that's about as far as it can
go. Another really common one that you
guys have probably seen a bit about is
Nintendo's trademark chaos. And I'm
going to do a fun contrast here between
Nintendo and Sega's trademark vagueness.
Nintendo is known for being very ligious
with their trademarks. If you put
something that even vaguely looks like a
Pokemon or Mario in something that isn't
officially Nintendo, there's a good
chance they're going to come after you
for it. They've even sued for things as
absurd as the trademark of a ball being
thrown at a monster. It's kind of
absurd. But the reason they do that is
because in Japan especially, the rules
around losing a trademark if it becomes
a generic are much more open and it's
very easy to lose your trademark if
you're not careful. So Nintendo very
strictly enforces their trademark
because their whole business is built on
their exclusive right to things like
Mario. If anyone could make a Mario game
and anyone could make a Pokemon game,
Nintendo would lose a huge portion of
their value because let's be real,
they're not making money because of
their hardware. They're not making money
because of their network code. They're
not making money because of much.
Certainly not the quality of the store.
The store is the Switch store is one of
the most pathetic piece of software I've
ever used in my life. Their trademarks
and their IPs are what make them
valuable. So, they strictly enforce
them. Who knows what makes Sega
valuable? I want to see if this one.
Where does Sega make their money right
now? I love that it's 50/50, but half of
you got it right. Gambling. Slot
machines. If you didn't know this, a
while back, Sega got acquired. Sega
Sammy was a merger that happened way
back because Sammy Holdings Company was
making a lot of money selling pachinko
machines and other gambling things in
Japan and they had a really, really bad
reputation. They were starting to look
very bad to the public. Sega was failing
because the Dreamcast just lost compared
to the other consoles. and Sammy saw the
opportunity to buy Sega mostly for the
sentiment win. They could use the name
Sega as their public name, which has a
positive reputation, to hide the fact
that they were doing other things with
their business. And this went very well
for them. This basically allowed them to
flip sediment and get away with
continuing to do terrible things. But
because of that, the value of Sega's
trademarks are not that they have the
exclusive rights to them. To be frank,
Sega doesn't really care what you do
with Sonic. The goal of Sonic isn't to
make them a lot of money directly. The
goal of the whole Sega brand is to have
enough positive sentiment that they're
less likely to have a big flip that
causes them to lose their gambling
business. So Sega's goal with their
trademarks is not to use them to make
money. It's to have positive sentiment
with the community. So they kind of let
you do whatever. Nintendo needs to sell
the things that they make with those
trademarks. So they can't do that. Sega
doesn't give a Hopefully this
helps contrast the difference between
these two here. So, what the is
Figma doing? I think Figma's in a weird
spot here because in my opinion, dev
mode is a BS trademark. That's a term
we've used for things for so long. Dev
is a generic, mode is a generic. The
combination of the words is very
generic. And there have been a lot of
tools, and I'm positive there is good
prior art to dev mode being used in
other places because it is such a
trademark. And because it just
got approved very recently, as we saw
here, November of last year, in order
for them to not lose it, they have to be
strict as hell with it. And I think
that's what we're seeing now. We're
seeing Figma protecting this trademark
at all costs because it is a
trademark and they are scared of losing
it. But as we saw earlier,
trademarks are kind of their thing as
they have config trademarked, they have
schema trademarked, they have factory
trademarked. seems like they've gotten
away with this for a while and they want
to make sure they can continue to. I
also don't think they've gotten a proper
blowback for it because I don't think
they've went after a prominent enough
figure in a public space like this
before. So, the combination of Dev mode
being a trademark, the
necessary nature of protecting your
trademark to keep it, and the weird
position Figma is in where their market
is shrinking and they're failing to grow
it. They're acting
irrationally. And it's kind of pathetic
to see a multi-billion dollar company
act like this. But this is kind of the
the end of the friendly nice guys Figma
that we have liked to pretend they were
for a while. I have felt that going away
for a bit now, but this is a real like,
oh, it's over now, isn't it? One other
important detail because people might
not know this. Tools like Lovable
actually let you import from Figma. So,
I can import a design from Figma and
generate code. I can do it here. I can
do it in bolt. Import from Figma. I even
do it from VZ. Import from Figma. Figma
is now a button you click in other
people's tools. They don't want that.
They want the opposite. They don't want
VZero or Lovable or Bolt to be the thing
people export their Figas to. They want
Figma to be the tool they do the
exporting with. And the more that these
tools allow you to import from Figma,
the more companies that are using Figma
are going to start trying them and the
more likely they are to cancel their
Figma subscriptions in favor of just
using Vzero in the first place. The more
that that happens, the less money Figma
can make, the less likely they are to
have a successful IPO and make all their
investors and their founders and
everybody else a whole bunch of money.
They are scared. They're acting scared.
And this is an absolute
trademark that I hope they lose in
court. Yeah, what a ride. I got nothing
else. Thank you guys as always and
hopefully my use of the word dev mode
throughout this doesn't get me sued.
Until next time, peace
nerds. I just went the whole video
without making a Ligma joke. You guys
proud?